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Show HN: Learn to Code for Free
- JorgeGT 10y agoI see you make heavy use of Cloud9, glad to see that I'm not the only one using it as a learning sandbox environment. It is truly a great platform, I use it to introduce people to Linux (terminal, editing files, etc.) without the hassle of setting a virtualbox, installing any software in their computers, or risking my machines.
- robtherobot 10y agoI agree - I especially love that it allows students to bypass many of the headaches of installing the right dependencies (something beginners struggle with for hours or days). Cloud9 let's you get straight to coding. Not sure if you're into Javascript development, but check out HyperDev.com - it's awesome! It takes things to a whole new level of fast. I think we have Docker to thank for progress on this front.
- robtherobot 10y agoDo you have a website for your course? I'd love to check it out.
- JorgeGT 10y agoOh sorry, I don't have a proper one, just when receiving new interns/researchers. Most of our research tools run on Linux but it is quite easy to destroy valuable data, so a c9 sandbox works wonders :)
- 551199 10y agoI tried it few weeks back and sadly they force you to add credit card to proceed. Few seconds of googling showed people using fake ones to circumvent it. Not really interested in that nor exposing card details.
- robtherobot 10y agoSend a message to support@upskillcourses.com and you'll get hooked up with a free Cloud9 account.
- alexhakawy 10y agojust send you an email for a free account.
- gianc 10y agoI'm on the same boat. I don't feel comfortable sharing CC details for a free service I might be interested to try (even though I won't have much time until next year to do something), and doesn't seem fair "cheating" the system using a fake one.
- robtherobot 10y agoI've decided to make my course on complete full-stack web development free, forever! It's a massive amount of content. Please let me know what you think of the course!
- garagemc2 10y agoawesome. Thanks. Have bookmarked this for the Christmas break. If you don't mind me asking - how old is the content? And what did you teach at GA?
- robtherobot 10y agoThe content is brand new. Just finished recording it. I teach HTML, CSS, Javascript, and Ruby on Rails at General Assembly.
- alexhakawy 10y agoyou guys located in Seattle? I live in Seattle.
- freehunter 10y agoI'm going through it as a tech professional who is a non-developer. I know how to code, I just don't do it professionally (and I don't know Ruby, let alone Rails). I'm loving it. Obviously the "here are some commands" and "go find Google Chrome" made me laugh a little but I understand the audience they're for. I love how quickly we get into actually creating something, it keeps my interest when I see progress. It's been 15 minutes and I already have a Rails blog set up, yay! Seriously, I haven't gotten that far in, but right now I'm fully believing there is a success story with your teaching method. Congrats, that's not an easy feat.
- robtherobot 10y agoThank you! Your words mean a lot. I agree that learning by doing is especially useful for coding and it's always great when non-developers pick up developer skills (it makes you better at what you do, and developers love you more too)! Message me if you have any questions along the way. I'm here to help.
- hatsix 10y agoI'm looking for courses that seem to be the opposite of this... no language or programming at all, but instead looking at the process of breaking down problems. We've hired several devs out of bootcamp, and they're all taught how to code, but not how to solve problems using code... Anyone have material that might be good for this? Books, videos, courses?
- paki123 10y agoSecond this. Would love information. This might be of relevance for you you though: https://math.berkeley.edu/~gmelvin/polya.pdf https://math.berkeley.edu/~gmelvin/polya.pdf
- avg_dev 10y agoCan you give an example of solving a problem using code vs coding?
- tqkxzugoaupvwqr 10y agoHe didn’t mean solving problems using code but solving problems conceptually before starting to code at all.
- hatsix 10y ago^this
- NicoJuicy 10y agoCurrent database: - When you have multiple layers of "companies" ( in a single table: Company) and every company has employees (table: Employee). Request: - List all company employees that have a random company as mother company, including their childs, all layers deep. So you create a optional integer parentCompanyId on the Company for the inheritance ( that's easy) How would you go further? - You may not use a recursion of sql Queries (or in code) to procedurally get the parentCompany or "child companies" of all layers deep. - You may change the database ( and you may use joins also)
- 10y ago
- gaius 10y ago"Forever" in the "full stack" world means 6 months before a whole 'nother load of frameworks are in fashion and you have to start again...
- BoysenberryPi 10y agoHTML,CSS, and Javascript are never out of fashion. The only thing he teaches that is applicable to what you said is Ruby on Rails and even then Rails has a strong foothold on the market.
- Ph0X 10y agoDoes it? RoR was the craze 2-3 years ago but I honestly haven't heard much about it as of late... Now everything seems to be Node.js
- BoysenberryPi 10y agoSystems that already exist need to be maintained. Why do people still write COBOL? Because it's cheaper to maintain an already in place system than to rip it out and replace it with the newest fad.
- Ph0X 10y agoI guess, but I'd imagine there's always more work for creating new sites than for maintaining old ones.
- jholman 10y agoMy professional experience says otherwise. There's always more work maintaining/enhancing sites than creating new ones. By the way, Rails is the craze from maybe 10-6 years ago. consider e.g. [0] But it is still far, far from dead. Time flies, but not as fast as you suggest. [0] https://www.google.ca/trends/explore?date=all&q=ruby%20on%20rails https://www.google.ca/trends/explore?date=all&q=ruby%20on%20...
- azazo 10y agoLook forward to checking it out. Thanks!
- robtherobot 10y agoCool. Message me if you have any questions along the way. I'm here to help!
- michaelkaufman 10y agoThis is great! I've been wanting to learn more about Rails for a long time. Thanks.
- robtherobot 10y agoSweet! I think you'll like Rails. Message me if you have questions along the way. I'm here to help.
- 551199 10y agoAre the later parts paid only or unlocked when progressed to certain point? 'User Memberships and Accepting Subscription Payments' and 'User Profiles and Relational Databases requires' shows message 'Lecture contents locked'.
- robtherobot 10y agoNo they are free. You just need to sign up for a free account to see them.
- ericzawo 10y agoThis is right up my alley, I'll let you know how it goes.
- robtherobot 10y agoPerfect! Message me if you have questions along the way. I'm here to help.
- alexhakawy 10y agoWhy Choose Ruby for a beginner. Why not JS and NODE EXPRESS or PHP that would have made this more simple for people who are new to programming and looking to get a job.
- GavinMcG 10y agoWhat makes you think JS or PHP are "more simple" for that audience? There are plenty of Ruby jobs out there, and it's an elegant and well-designed language that's got a mature framework. Especially crucial for relative beginners: it doesn't have the flavor-of-the-week problem that JS does, nor is its most prominent example a legacy mess, as Wordpress is for PHP.
- alexhakawy 10y agoall most all of the web is written in PHP, a beginner can't understand how everything fits together by learning Ruby. With php you can literally insert it into HTML. For me is all about the big picture, Plus I think there are more jobs in PHP than Ruby
- igor_filippov 10y agoWell, and then you get people who insert php into html in production environments. Believe me, I've seen it more than once. I don't see how PHP is easier than Ruby. It's not Haskel, after all.
- alexhakawy 10y agocause PHP isn't magic like Ruby on Rails.
- alexhakawy 10y agoDoes this cover HTML5 and CS3? How much JS is taught to be able to make me employable
- webwanderings 10y agoThis is incredible. Thank you for your generosity and kindness in opening this up for everyone.
- robtherobot 10y agoYou're welcome! Hope you enjoy the content!
- akkartik 10y agoWhy're you making it free?
- robtherobot 10y agoBecause why not?
- akkartik 10y agoLol, come on, reveal. You taught so many students. Why suddenly turn off the revenue? (I'm not an entirely uninterested observer: http://akkartik.name/post/mu http://akkartik.name/post/mu)
- mcfrankline 10y agoRoben, I'm actually disappointed to find out that you've made this course free. It seems the folk on reddit gave you a nasty bit of pressure? Well, i don't see how you're going to be able to maintain this project(100's of hours of videos) without earning anything for it. Quality is bound to decrease in the long run. I believe you should stick with your previous model(Free for a month or two, subscribe when its useful or pay a fixed sum for lifetime access).
- alexhakawy 10y agonot a lot of people have money to just pay for everything on top of daily living bills. Less people would use it if it involved money.
- alexhawdon 10y agoMaybe incorporate an Ubuntu-style 'suggested payment' part to the signup? You could have one or two reminders during the course if they choose 'Free'. Or supplement with paid-for content that goes beyond the course? I agree that it's a lot of work and wouldn't be unfair to seek some compensation.
- freehunter 10y agoObviously I don't have insight into what the creator will be doing with it in the future, but what I fully expect is these videos will be free, but the additional videos on React and other frameworks/languages will be offered at additional cost.
- vipinsahu 10y agoLooking same kind of tutorial for PHP . BTW may i know which tool you have used for screen recording thanks
- alexhakawy 10y agowould be nice to find something like this for PHP
- mynameisbahaa 10y agolynda.com has some great courses on php by the authors kevin skoglund & David Powers. These courses are not free though and they are mostly about php.You will find courses covering html,css,javascript and a lot more there too. PS I don't work for them I only like their work
- alexhakawy 10y agoI'm guessing this course isn't aimed at people who's new to Web development? how are we suppose to know some of those rail commands? like generate scaffold blog posts?
- robtherobot 10y agoThis course is comprehensive and goes from beginner to some fairly advanced content. No previous coding experience is required. You will be guided from the beginning.
- alexhakawy 10y agoThat sounds nice, How Does it cover HTML, JS and Ruby on Rails in Depth? I assume that would take a long time lol
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- alexhakawy 10y agohow does this compare to www.codermanual.com?
- rsdlearning 10y agoLooks like it's the same instructor so i'm curious as well.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- atmosx 10y agoOT: The reviews on the frontpage are fake right? I'm not bashing the course by any means, I'm just curious. I see lots of services display similar user quotes and was wondering if it's a standard marketing practice.
- blauditore 10y agoThere are marketers who do this with real quotes, sometimes by asking customers for a statement and permission to publish it. Those here look kind of unrealistic since all reviews are worded thoughtfully, gave 5 stars, have similar length and no grammatical errors. Also, each user has a perfect portrait image as profile picture - this isn't even the case on LinkedIn...
- robtherobot 10y agoThey are real. Some of the students are international where English is not their first language. I'm happy to put you in touch with these students, or any past students if you'd like to hear more from them.
- jheriko 10y agoi'm pretty sure that if you can't learn for yourself for free by using the internet (or even libraries and help files etc. like i did) your already starting on the wrong foot. having the ability to solve that problem for yourself is important... if you struggle with that you will struggle in most real world dev roles imo, because you will need to continue to do this for yourself throughout your career.
- freehunter 10y agoIs this not considered "learning on the internet for free"?
- throw20161123 10y agoThis is great work. And (this is not a jab at the creator) a signal for me to move on from web development. We are now at a similar point to knowing HTML in 1998 would land you a plum job; except it's now frontend frameworks. There's going to be tremendous downward pressure on wages in the next few years; especially in web development. I recommend everyone who wants to stay competitive to move on to harder things or leverage whatever soft skills they have.
- seaborn63 10y agoMy sister has been wanting to try out coding for a while, and this looks perfect for that.
- delblues 10y agoMan, thanks. You course in insanely well explained and good!
- imranq 10y agoWhy not just use Udemy instead of a separate site?
- rsdlearning 10y agoLooks like this is from the same guy that did Codermanual. Wonder if he is actually going to be around to help for this course as he more or less abandoned the other one after a couple of months of it getting popular. I have a pretty bad taste in my mouth for this instructor still from that experience.
- alexhakawy 10y agojust curious why Ruby for beginners or is this a course for people with some knowledge of code? why not choose JS or PHP