The well-loved education startup Codecademy is tapping into what appears to be a watershed moment for the inevitable spike in demand for computer science skills. Mashable's Sarah Kessler offers some impressive statistics about the very recent explosion in interest:

Codeacademy, a startup that uses interactive online lessons to turn anyone into a computer programmer, has signed up 97,000 students in less than 48 hours for its New Year’s resolution class Code Year. That’s more than twice as many students as were enrolled in the 150 U.S. computer science undergraduate programs that the Computer Research Association surveyed last year. … All Codeacademy users already have access to these free lessons, which turn learning JavaScript into a game and will soon expand to other programming languages. The class emails will serve as reminders and guidance, putting individual lessons together in a cohesive curriculum.

Minutes after Kessley published her post, the student count broke the six-figure threshold and was nearing 101,000 at the time of this posting.

With points and badges and everything, Codecademy resembles a cross between Math Blaster and Foursquare. Weird analogy, we know, but try it out and you'll see what we mean. Oh and unlike all 150 of those computer science undergrad programs, Codecademy is free.

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Adam Clark Estes