Whimsical Animations by Josh Comeau
Shares rank 11 of 15 online courses by recommenders
People recommend it for the craft and attention to detail Josh Comeau puts into his teaching, and they say it is higher quality than a college course. Critics raised no recurring caveats.
7 people recommended Whimsical Animations by Josh Comeau in Hacker News comments and none criticized it, November 2025 to October 2026.
6 of the 7 people who recommend it commented in one thread, “Whimsical Animations Course Open House”.
Summary written by Claude from 5 comments.
7 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 7
- mixed feelings
- 0
- warn against or regret it
- 0
The record
Recommended in 2 of 12 months
In 2 different threads.
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 7 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- Nobody criticizes itNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 2 of 12 monthsNeeds 4 or more, not met.
- Recommended in 2 threadsNeeds 5 or more, not met.
- 6 of its 7 recommenders came from one threadNeeds half or less, not met.
The same rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. Mixed feelings count toward neither side. How the badge works
What people say about it
Reasons grouped from a sample of 5 of the 7 opinions about it, picked in proportion to how many people recommend it, have mixed feelings and criticize it. Each mark is one comment in the sample. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
High quality, consistently excellent teaching
“I've always appreciated the craft and attention to detail that Josh puts into his work”
Comment from 2 May 2026 in “Whimsical Animations Course Open House” “compared to a college course they are wayyyyyyy higher quality”
Comment from 1 May 2026 in “Whimsical Animations Course Open House” “His courses are always amazing”
Comment from 9 Dec 2025 in “Win Josh Comeaus New Course: Whimsical Animations”
Other online courses people recommend
The four most recommended other online courses, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Mixed | Criticize | Approval | Months | Had for | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nand2Tetris | 26 | 2 | 3 | 90% | 10 | — | Approved |
| Math Academy | 25 | 8 | 1 | 96% | 11 | — | Approved |
| Neural Networks: Zero to Hero by Andrej Karpathy | 25 | 2 | 1 | 96% | 8 | — | Approved |
| CS336: Language Modeling from Scratch | 11 | 1 | 0 | 100% | 5 | — | Approved |
| Whimsical Animations by Josh ComeauThis page | 7 | 0 | 0 | 100% | 2 | — | — |
Also compared with CS50 by Harvard.
What people said
5 of the 7 opinions about it, picked in proportion to the three counts, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I've always appreciated the craft and attention to detail that Josh puts into his work”
“Appreciate the free preview to see what the course is like.”
“compared to a college course they are wayyyyyyy higher quality”
“Nice lesson on animation performance, i learned a lot by reading this.”
“His courses are always amazing”
Counts come from 1,791,911 Hacker News comments labeled by Claude, November 2025 to October 2026, with data through October 31, 2026. Counts updated 2 Nov 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.