Learn.co — The Platform That Changed Coding Education

Aug 2013

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A Sunday Meeting?!?!

Nine months into Flatiron School's operation, with three concurrent cohorts each modifying the curriculum their own way, a small faculty met on a Sunday to brainstorm solutions.

The vision: systematic mechanisms to track changes while maintaining quality. The solution: a curriculum management system leveraging Git and GitHub as the foundation.

Board members expressed skepticism. Competitors charged far less. But online education buyers weren't seeking course access—they sought life-changing outcomes.

Industry-First Job Guarantee Full refund if employment outcomes weren't met

$60M+ Annual Revenue

$10M ARR Year 2

250 Customers Year 1

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Learn.co was built to create an immersive educational experience using actual developer tools rather than simulated ones. Students worked with real code, real challenges, real workflows.

Real Git Workflow: Fork, Code, Submit PR

The Developer Workflow

1 Fork GitHub repository
2 Clone locally
3 Install dependencies
4 Run test suite
5 Solve the lab
6 Commit solutions
7 Push to GitHub fork
8 Submit pull request

Test-Driven Learning

The curriculum implemented test-driven methodology where students made code functional by passing tests. Red for failing, green for passing.

✕ expect(student.understands).toBe(true)

✓ expect(student.understands).toBe(true)

⚡ 2 Seconds

Browser IDE

Around 2015, the team developed an integrated server-powered IDE accessible directly in browsers. Click "Open" and launch a fully-configured environment in under 2 seconds.

Many developers from this team later worked on GitHub Codespaces.

Unique > Traditional

✕

Video lectures
Mark-complete buttons
Downloadable projects

✓

Real repositories
Automated testing
Actual pull requests

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Learning is inherently social. At Flatiron School, student-to-student education was magical. Learn.co was built to replicate this collaborative environment online.

"Replicate the campus, not the classroom"

Students posed questions in real-time to the community. Questions piped into Slack, tagged by lesson, averaging hundreds of threads daily.

Hundreds formed weekly with ~4 attendees average. Instructor-led study groups replaced traditional lectures—many-to-many instead of one-to-many.

When two students accessed the same lab, the platform prompted pairing opportunities. Technology detected when group work made sense.

Students received domains and GitHub Pages blogs for weekly assignments. Posts surfaced on relevant lessons—asynchronous social learning.

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70%+ Completion Rate

While most online platforms struggle with single-digit completion, Learn.co achieved over 70% by separating curriculum from task completion tracking.

The Checklist System

A checklist system broke every activity into simple tasks that could be monitored automatically.

Automated Everything

Students only got credit when they actually did the task—verified through API integrations.

Coach Dashboard

Templates for different phases of the student journey—from pre-enrollment through job search.

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0 + Curriculum Commits

0 + Students Taught

$ 0 M Exit to 2U

0 Team Members

"The GitHub team was so impressed they hired half our engineering team to build Codespaces."

The Ripple Effect

Learn.co's approach influenced how the industry thinks about developer education, online learning platforms, test-driven learning, and browser-based development environments.

Real tools over simulations
Social over isolated
Automated accountability
Outcomes over access

You know you've built something special when students tattoo your logo on their bodies. These Learn.co graduates didn't just complete the program, they became part of the family forever.