3 ms·

As much as I love Udacity lectures (see my pro-udacity rant above or below) some of the things they do don't scale. They can take hours to perfect an explanati

As much as I love Udacity lectures (see my pro-udacity rant above or below) some of the things they do don't scale. They can take hours to perfect an explanation and examples and present it to you. That scales. They cannot give quality feedback to 1000s of students. I had a similar experience where they switched the sample data in one of the submissions, so the code would not work. I don't blame the person for not catching that. Had they told me "this should work, but I don't know why it does not", I would have been fine. Instead they made thing that they thought might work: Use an alternative notation for matrix multiplication which is different in "subtle ways" (it was identical), change the order of the inputs (the functions were commutative, but more importantly they should have known that), and some other nonsensical advice. I would have respected them simply saying they don't know but actively bad advice is quite damaging.

SilasX 8y ago
It's majestically reasonable to expect experts to understand what they're teaching, doubly so when they are the literal face of the course. That includes knowing how to use the single parameter on the most common React function.
- projectramo 8y ago
  Experts should of course. But should the person who understands it best be the face? Or should the person who presents it best be the face? The person who understands it best might design the content, or check that it is accurate. The person who is most gifted at intuitive graphics should design the visuals. I don't think the fact that the face of course is not an expert is a big deal. I do think they should not be answering the advanced questions. However, with 1000s of questions coming in, I don't know how they should solve that issue. They need a quick way of knowing which is the hard question and which is the easy one. (Is that equivalent to the halting problem? I think it might be).
  - SilasX 8y ago
    "Why isn't setState doing what the docs say it should" is not an advanced question, and if he's not prepared to answer basic questions, he shouldn't be "faking it until he makes it" and doing office hours and charging $800 for his expertise. Being able to answer my questions is what I'm paying for. He didn't simply say "I don't know", he confidently faked it until he made it and claimed that he knew the answer, which was false and based on not knowing how a common parameter worked.
    - projectramo 8y ago
      I agree with you. Or rather, it seems you agree with me. Or perhaps we agreed with each other all along but I am not sure why it sounds like you're disagreeing.
      - SilasX 8y ago
        Sorry, I misread your comments; it seemed like you were saying it was unreasonable to expect the kind of answers I was asking for.

SilasX 8y ago

It's majestically reasonable to expect experts to understand what they're teaching, doubly so when they are the literal face of the course. That includes knowing how to use the single parameter on the most common React function.

projectramo 8y ago
Experts should of course. But should the person who understands it best be the face? Or should the person who presents it best be the face? The person who understands it best might design the content, or check that it is accurate. The person who is most gifted at intuitive graphics should design the visuals. I don't think the fact that the face of course is not an expert is a big deal. I do think they should not be answering the advanced questions. However, with 1000s of questions coming in, I don't know how they should solve that issue. They need a quick way of knowing which is the hard question and which is the easy one. (Is that equivalent to the halting problem? I think it might be).
- SilasX 8y ago
  "Why isn't setState doing what the docs say it should" is not an advanced question, and if he's not prepared to answer basic questions, he shouldn't be "faking it until he makes it" and doing office hours and charging $800 for his expertise. Being able to answer my questions is what I'm paying for. He didn't simply say "I don't know", he confidently faked it until he made it and claimed that he knew the answer, which was false and based on not knowing how a common parameter worked.
  - projectramo 8y ago
    I agree with you. Or rather, it seems you agree with me. Or perhaps we agreed with each other all along but I am not sure why it sounds like you're disagreeing.
    - SilasX 8y ago
      Sorry, I misread your comments; it seemed like you were saying it was unreasonable to expect the kind of answers I was asking for.