Codeacademy has introduced a new set of free online classes that teach how to build simple API apps with Youtube, Bitly, Twilio and more.

Writing on the CodeAcademy blog, Zach Sims, founder of the company writes:

Programming is an amazing skill because it lets you create things on your computer. Using APIs makes that one step easier. It's often hard for developers (even professional ones!) to get up to date on the latest APIs and to learn how to use them. Dense documentation makes it nearly impossible to pick up an API and start programming immediately. These new Codecademy lessons should be just as helpful to experienced developers as they are to total newbies. They'll help you get up and running faster than ever.

As with Codeacademy's "hands-on" course and is aimed at beginners with no previous knowledge of a programming language or computer science. Basically it's a case of reading instructions, reading code and adding lines of code as instructed.

Currently there are nine course on offers and each of them starts with an introductory module on How to use APIs. There are three versions of this - in JavaScript for working with YouTube, SoundCloud and Parse; in Ruby for Twilio, SendGrid and NPR; and in Python for Bitly, Placekitten and Sunlight Foundation.

The common introductory module covers what is HTTP, making HTTP requests and the response from the server is either 19 or 20 exercises depending on the language and in general there are a much smaller number of exercises about the specific API - so one you have covered the basics you should be in a good position to master new APIs.