Here’s a free course that could get you hired

On Monday nearly 300,000 people received an e-mail containing their first free lesson in computer coding from New York based Codeacademy.

The course is part of their “Code Year” initiative where anybody and everybody is encouraged to make their New Year’s resolution to learn computer programming in 2012. By the end of it, students will be able to build their own apps.

Coding is a valuable skill in today’s economy. The federal government reports that Computer Programmers and Interactive Media Developers are in high demand in some Canadian cities, such as Montreal, where their average wage is $34.50 per hour, and Winnipeg where their average wage is $25.47.

Codecademy was launched in August by Zach Sims and Ryan Bubinski, recent Columbia U. graduates. They planned to move to Silicon Valley to start a technology company, but Sims, a political science major, didn’t know how to code. The books and programs they found didn’t make it easy. So the pair started Codeacademy, which uses online interactivity to teach the masses.

Codeacademy told the New York Times that they will eventually charge to match coders with jobs.