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> I started the Udacity self-driving car Nano-degree. (I won't be finishing it, but that is another story.) I'd be curious to know why myself? I'm about 2/3rd

by cr0sh 9y ago

> I started the Udacity self-driving car Nano-degree. (I won't be finishing it, but that is another story.) I'd be curious to know why myself? I'm about 2/3rds of the way thru the second term (I'm in the November cohort), and I plan to finish the nanodegree. What I have found, though, with this second term, is that it seems to be a rehash of the CS373 course (I took that back in 2012, when Udacity first started) - though it also has taught a few new concepts for me (I like the fact that it is mostly done in C++ - which had gotten really rusty for me - but now I am liking C++ more). I'd also recommend the Coursera ML course - from what I know, it is basically identical (if not the same material) as the original ML Class from 2011 (I took that one, which was my intro to MOOCs). If you can wrap your mind around the programming language used (Octave - basically an open-source clone of MatLab - where the main primitive is a vector/list), you'll find it does a great job at explaining many concepts that you might have had trouble with in the past (when we got to neural networks and backprop, it finally clicked for me - same with how think in terms to figure out how to parallelize processes).

dbcurtis 9y ago
OK, since a couple people are curious I'll spend the bandwidth. It really is an issue of personal circumstances, not any failing of the Udacity course. I like the video lectures a lot, and got a lot out of them. I like the quizes and short problems. The large projects are a little too color-by-numbers for my taste, I really would like to see an incremental exercise step in between in order to flesh out understanding more solidly, but if I had enough time I could probably fill than in myself. But as I said above, my decision not to follow through is mostly personal circumstances. When I signed up for the course I was casting around for something new to do and thought the course would add to my robotics knowledge and cred. By the time my class cohort started, I was working at a robotics startup. Aside from the startup taking a lot of time and energy, doing robots by day, robots at night, and robots on the weekend just got to be a bit much. Something in my life had to give, and Udacity didn't make the cut this time.
- cr0sh 9y ago
  Hey - that's a perfectly reasonable answer, and I glad for you on the startup bit (sounds fun). You're right on the "color by numbers" part - but I think there's a couple of reasons for it. I think that the purpose of the course isn't geared only to ML and self-driving vehicle purposes, but also as a means toward general software development. So they don't expect everyone to be at the self-starting coder level. Secondly, if they were to, say, have you code each project from scratch with only a bare outline of what is needed, I think they'd have to likely expand the course (more lessons to teach things more in depth), as well as extend the time for the lessons; all of this would mean the course would be much longer, and that students would have to dedicate even more time to the effort, beyond what they already are doing. Some could do that, but I think that many wouldn't be able to; they have to strike a balance somewhere, and this has been their answer. Plus, I have a feeling that many of their students are currently students going to university in some manner, and not all of them in the United States, but abroad internationally. Many of these students are likely struggling just to make the payments for this nanodegree as-is (and may have contributed to the drop-out rate from term 1 to term 2). Making the course longer and more expensive might put it completely out of reach for those students.

by cr0sh 9y ago

dbcurtis 9y ago

OK, since a couple people are curious I'll spend the bandwidth. It really is an issue of personal circumstances, not any failing of the Udacity course. I like the video lectures a lot, and got a lot out of them. I like the quizes and short problems. The large projects are a little too color-by-numbers for my taste, I really would like to see an incremental exercise step in between in order to flesh out understanding more solidly, but if I had enough time I could probably fill than in myself. But as I said above, my decision not to follow through is mostly personal circumstances. When I signed up for the course I was casting around for something new to do and thought the course would add to my robotics knowledge and cred. By the time my class cohort started, I was working at a robotics startup. Aside from the startup taking a lot of time and energy, doing robots by day, robots at night, and robots on the weekend just got to be a bit much. Something in my life had to give, and Udacity didn't make the cut this time.

cr0sh 9y ago
Hey - that's a perfectly reasonable answer, and I glad for you on the startup bit (sounds fun). You're right on the "color by numbers" part - but I think there's a couple of reasons for it. I think that the purpose of the course isn't geared only to ML and self-driving vehicle purposes, but also as a means toward general software development. So they don't expect everyone to be at the self-starting coder level. Secondly, if they were to, say, have you code each project from scratch with only a bare outline of what is needed, I think they'd have to likely expand the course (more lessons to teach things more in depth), as well as extend the time for the lessons; all of this would mean the course would be much longer, and that students would have to dedicate even more time to the effort, beyond what they already are doing. Some could do that, but I think that many wouldn't be able to; they have to strike a balance somewhere, and this has been their answer. Plus, I have a feeling that many of their students are currently students going to university in some manner, and not all of them in the United States, but abroad internationally. Many of these students are likely struggling just to make the payments for this nanodegree as-is (and may have contributed to the drop-out rate from term 1 to term 2). Making the course longer and more expensive might put it completely out of reach for those students.