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Show HN: HN.Academy – Top online courses recommended by Hacker News users

773 points by yaj54 8y ago

yaj54 8y ago
Hey HN, Check out HN.Academy and let me know what you think. It's the result of mining the HN archives for references to online courses and then ranking them and displaying all references in one place. Ranking currently takes into account HN stories (points) and comments (sentiment, karma, estimated points). I had started with a much broader set of course providers, but Coursera ended up swamping the rankings of pretty much all the other providers. edX is also in the rankings with a few courses. I plan to add more providers but as of now none of them will impact the top rankings. If you were looking to start a new learning endeavor in the new year... here ya go. Best, Yaj
- garrettskj 8y ago
  too bad, you weren't able to rank these by difficulty and/or skill level. even without that, this is an awesome list. thanks.
- jczhang 8y ago
  Interesting, wonder if that's because Coursera is perceived and thought of as better in general or is it due to other reasons such as general popularity. May make sense to have some kind of normalization to unbias it if the latter.
ccwilson10 8y ago
I'd throw this resource in the ring since it has the most material out of anything on the list: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18230314 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18230314 Awesome page, though!
ramon 8y ago
AWS, Udemy and others also offer a bunch of free coursers. It's incredible how these free courses are rolling out.
qwerty456127 8y ago
What about high-quality intros and tutorials you can complete in less time [than a serious academic course] to acquire practically reasonable understanding of particular technologies/subjects?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
b0bby_tabl3s 8y ago
SWEET!
time0ut 8y ago
Awesome work! It'd be neat if there was a search feature that let us search by subject or keyword or any other course metadata.
projectramo 8y ago
This list mostly passes the gut check: the courses near the top are almost universally high quality, and quite reputable. Now, why did I say "mostly" and "almost"? Two reasons: 1. The best technical courses are on Udacity. You may disagree but I think enough people would agree that it ought to be somewhere on the list. 2. Learning to learn is popular but its kind of vacuous. (You may disagree, and this time I may be in a tiny minority who hold this view). So I think the sentiment reader might need tweaking. Still, all in all, a great resource. I am bookmarking it and am glad you did this.
- indigochill 8y ago
  Although I can see why a technically-oriented person might say L2L is vacuous, I do disagree. It's not dense or technical, but I got two concrete insights and practices from it (and I don't think I even bothered to finish it): 1. The pomodoro technique really is useful if you're a hopeless procrastinator like me. It's saved my butt numerous times. 2. The explanation of the value of alternating between focused intense thinking and diffused thinking also helped clarify why unfocused thinking is genuinely productive (of course, as long as it's mixed with focused thinking). I've used this to work around mental blocks when I got too stuck in the focused mode.
  - projectramo 8y ago
    I agree with you. These are useful concepts, but I've read 5 minute blog posts that convincingly explained these. Spreading this instruction over days/weeks seems to make my point.
    - happycatbasket 8y ago
      That's a problem with a lot of content, right? Specifically practical concepts. Did you ever find yourself thinking the same things about your entry level college classes if you had been lucky enough to attend any? You can read a blog post about building bicycle wheels in five minutes and get most everything you'd gain from going to a weeklong course, but the difference is all in how you'd engage with it. A longer discussion, open area for questions, and building familiarity with the material drive the skill home whereas that 5 minute blog post might as well disappear into the depths of memory the second you navigate elsewhere. I took the course and while I agree that I wanted more depth, it certainly wasn't "vacuous" given the context. And it should be noted, the materials of the course follow some of the concepts taught within - they're doing their best to make sure you learn their basic concepts of how to learn.
gregw134 8y ago
You're missing fast.ai for machine learning. It's been mentioned or linked 700+ times on HN.
- yaj54 8y ago
  I'll need to take the fast.ai course first so that I can upgrade my course-extraction-from-text code from regexes to deep learning. ;-)
- _u2kt 8y ago
  agree - fast.ai is a fantastic resource - i wish everything i want to learn about was taught in it's very practical style
jefflombardjr 8y ago
Love this! Thank you!
tyagis 8y ago
The pop-up to subscribe every 2 seconds is extremely off-putting. Made me want to just close the tab multiple times. The curated content only kept me from doing it. Edit: Nice work! Next steps would be to sort and collate similar topics.
- yaj54 8y ago
  Ick, that is a bug. Mind sending me details on your browser setup? yaj@the-domain-of-the-linked-story.
xchaotic 8y ago
The biggest concern I have with this is that it promotes what's already popular to the top. This means Blockchain and crypto are there and I doubt that's the most valuable thing you can learn this year.
DarthMader 8y ago
I wonder if anyone ever made a list of paid only courses worth it. Now that would be really novel.
samstave 8y ago
It would be helpful to be able to filter between free and paid off the main list.
mettamage 8y ago
Hmm... where are Gilbert Strang his courses? He is recommended quite a bit, isn't he?
feluso 8y ago
I've been looking for something like this, thank you a lot! I wonder if something similar exists for HN book recommendations?
- james_s_tayler 8y ago
  Just Google HN book threads.
Dowwie 8y ago
Going to recommend the most widely taken course at Yale at the moment, which fortunately is now available as a MOOC on coursera, "The Science of Well Being": https://www.coursera.org/learn/the-science-of-well-being https://www.coursera.org/learn/the-science-of-well-being This is a positive psychology course based on work by Seligman et al.
- mattnewport 8y ago
  Would this be Seligman of "none of my positive psychology results replicate" fame?
  - colechristensen 8y ago
    Could you provide more information or sources about that?
  - Dowwie 8y ago
    Does this mean you're not signing up for the course? :D
  - barry-cotter 8y ago
    Do Positive Psychology Exercises Work? A Replication of Seligman et al. (2005) Results: Repeated measures analyses showed that the PPEs led to lasting increases in happiness, as did the positive placebo. The PPEs did not exceed the control condition in producing changes in depression over time. Conclusions: Brief, positive psychology interventions may boost happiness through a common factor involving the activation of positive, self-relevant information rather than through other specific mechanisms. Finally, the effects of PPEs on depression may be more modest than previously assumed. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Myriam_Mongrain/publication/259956843_Do_Positive_Psychology_Exercises_Work_A_Replication_of_Seligman_et_al/links/5a370f73aca27247ede1c782/Do-Positive-Psychology-Exercises-Work-A-Replication-of-Seligman-et-al.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Myriam_Mongrain/publica...
    - mattnewport 8y ago
sandov 8y ago
I didn't even know there was an academy TLD. Is it saturated yet?
fhars 8y ago
Looks like the list counts complaints that a course does not exist as a recommendation, or why is the Crypto II course on coursere in the list? What was the original start date, September 2014 or 2013?
lbj 8y ago
Where's SICP ?
a_naughty_mouse 8y ago
- Sponsered by Coursera
wpmoradi 8y ago
This is awesome!
taherchhabra 8y ago
I like the idea. Would be interesting to see Gadgets recommended by HN users, Travel destinations recommended by HN users, Books recommended by HN users, Games recommended by HN users Movies recommended by HN users
- RustingSword 8y ago
  As for books, there's already Hacker News Books https://hackernewsbooks.com/top-books-on-hacker-news https://hackernewsbooks.com/top-books-on-hacker-news
- yaj54 8y ago
  Indeed. Categories where there are authoritative urls are the low hanging fruit. A previous related work of mine is TechYaks [0], which ranks software tech talks using (among other signals) HN recommends. I have another one in the pipe... [0]: https://techyaks.com/ https://techyaks.com/
state_less 8y ago
Recommendations and upvotes are a neat little signal to make sticky content rise to the top. This site is a great example.
Asparagirl 8y ago
This is a useful site, but you should probably disclose on it somewhere that you're getting affiliate revenue from every person clicking through and signing up for Coursera courses through your links...
- yaj54 8y ago
  I do, on every course page. Big grey box.
  - Asparagirl 8y ago
    I missed that and I am an idiot. Mea culpa.
smarttack 8y ago
You know these are all affiliate links?
- _lpa_ 8y ago
  I'm curious - do you think affiliate links are a problem, and if so, why?
  - GrumpyCoder 8y ago
    I have seen lots of udemy affiliate link spam on "learn programming" type subreddits. They use alt-accounts for fake reviews and make affiliate links looks like regular links. I'm okay with them as long as there is transparency and don't start a spam race.
- mxschumacher 8y ago
  they are affiliate links, yes.
hyperpallium 8y ago
The calculus course appears twice (same eventual URL), with different HN citations. > Calculus: Single Variable Part 1 - Functions Coursera · University of Pennsylvania https://www.coursera.org/learn/single-variable-calculus https://www.coursera.org/learn/single-variable-calculus
hyperpallium 8y ago
Is there a sort of "axiomatic high school maths" course, that builds up from the basics without handwaving? i.e. that covers the actual reasons and proofs for things, not just the mechanics/tricks/techniques. The way geometry is taught. Some might be beyond high school level, like fundamental theorems of arithmetic (unique prime factorization) and algebra (polynomial factors/zeros). There's also non-integer exponents, defining reals etc. All this stuff is used in High School but must be taken on faith. Good for believers, bad for skeptics. Or is this just Mathematics 101? [my engineering maths didn't cover it]
- rjblackman 8y ago
  Not a course but I believe Mathematics: Its Content, Methods and Meaning by A.D. Aleksandrov, A.N. Kolmogorov , M.A. Lavrent'ev may cover this in book form. (FWIW I have not read this, but intend to at some point)
  - sonabinu 8y ago
    It’s an amazing book! And very well written. Totally understandable!
- psyklic 8y ago
  I highly recommend the courses on brilliant.org. They are not axiomatic, but they heavily focus on building up deep insight rather than mechanical problem solving -- https://brilliant.org https://brilliant.org. That said, for a rigorous proof-based approach to high school math, you may enjoy "Basic Mathematics" by Lang: https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Mathematics-Serge-Lang/dp/0387967877 https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Mathematics-Serge-Lang/dp/03879...
heyjudy 8y ago
I'm looking for, and haven't yet found, a practical-as-possible, intermediate language design |& compiler design MOOC video course. Ideas appreciated.
- yahnu 8y ago
  I haven't taken these courses yet but Automata Theory is in my todo list. These are offered through Stanford Lagunita (Stanford's implementation of openedX) * Compilers: https://lagunita.stanford.edu/courses/Engineering/Compilers/Fall2014/about https://lagunita.stanford.edu/courses/Engineering/Compilers/... * Automata Theory: https://lagunita.stanford.edu/courses/course-v1:ComputerScience+Automata+SelfPaced/about https://lagunita.stanford.edu/courses/course-v1:ComputerScie...
reckemal 8y ago
thanks!
paraschopra 8y ago
I’m planning to enroll in statistical mechanics course. Anyone else wants to team up and study as a group? We may finish faster that way. Email me: paras1987 <at> gmail
mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
Any list like this one for finance / investing material? Thanks for the resource - will be put to good use. I’d love it if there were categories for paid, non-paid and overall most recommended.
- arvinsim 8y ago
  Chalk me as one of those interested too. I decided that it was worth learning mastering that domain rather than continue on expanding my technical programming skills.
maroonblazer 8y ago
I took the one and only Linear Algebra course cited in this list and did not care for it. I found Strang's MIT course on the subject much better. I seem to recall reading other's had the same experience. Perhaps we need a separate index that's just YT (and Vimeo?)?
nl 8y ago
Recommendations need to decay by date more. Eg, the Johns Hopkins University "Data Science" course isn't worth doing (unless maybe it has been updated?), and note that most of the comments are pre-2017. It's an R course, but it teaches pre-Tidyverse R. Also it's not a great course in that the assignments aren't synced to the lectures - you need to know lots of stuff which haven't been touched on to complete the assignments at each stage. (Source: I did it in 2014 or 15)
aashu_dwivedi 8y ago
I am curious to know how you built it, do you keep polling for the new a items on the HN? How do you figure out if it's a course? Do you use regexes for it or something more sophisticated / complecated?
gauravgupta 8y ago
Hackr.io does something very similar.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

773 points by yaj54 8y ago

Hey HN, Check out HN.Academy and let me know what you think. It's the result of mining the HN archives for references to online courses and then ranking them and displaying all references in one place. Ranking currently takes into account HN stories (points) and comments (sentiment, karma, estimated points). I had started with a much broader set of course providers, but Coursera ended up swamping the rankings of pretty much all the other providers. edX is also in the rankings with a few courses. I plan to add more providers but as of now none of them will impact the top rankings. If you were looking to start a new learning endeavor in the new year... here ya go. Best, Yaj

garrettskj 8y ago
too bad, you weren't able to rank these by difficulty and/or skill level. even without that, this is an awesome list. thanks.
jczhang 8y ago
Interesting, wonder if that's because Coursera is perceived and thought of as better in general or is it due to other reasons such as general popularity. May make sense to have some kind of normalization to unbias it if the latter.

ccwilson10 8y ago

I'd throw this resource in the ring since it has the most material out of anything on the list: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18230314 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18230314 Awesome page, though!

ramon 8y ago

AWS, Udemy and others also offer a bunch of free coursers. It's incredible how these free courses are rolling out.

qwerty456127 8y ago

What about high-quality intros and tutorials you can complete in less time [than a serious academic course] to acquire practically reasonable understanding of particular technologies/subjects?

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

b0bby_tabl3s 8y ago

SWEET!

time0ut 8y ago

Awesome work! It'd be neat if there was a search feature that let us search by subject or keyword or any other course metadata.

projectramo 8y ago

This list mostly passes the gut check: the courses near the top are almost universally high quality, and quite reputable. Now, why did I say "mostly" and "almost"? Two reasons: 1. The best technical courses are on Udacity. You may disagree but I think enough people would agree that it ought to be somewhere on the list. 2. Learning to learn is popular but its kind of vacuous. (You may disagree, and this time I may be in a tiny minority who hold this view). So I think the sentiment reader might need tweaking. Still, all in all, a great resource. I am bookmarking it and am glad you did this.

indigochill 8y ago
Although I can see why a technically-oriented person might say L2L is vacuous, I do disagree. It's not dense or technical, but I got two concrete insights and practices from it (and I don't think I even bothered to finish it): 1. The pomodoro technique really is useful if you're a hopeless procrastinator like me. It's saved my butt numerous times. 2. The explanation of the value of alternating between focused intense thinking and diffused thinking also helped clarify why unfocused thinking is genuinely productive (of course, as long as it's mixed with focused thinking). I've used this to work around mental blocks when I got too stuck in the focused mode.
- projectramo 8y ago
  I agree with you. These are useful concepts, but I've read 5 minute blog posts that convincingly explained these. Spreading this instruction over days/weeks seems to make my point.
  - happycatbasket 8y ago
    That's a problem with a lot of content, right? Specifically practical concepts. Did you ever find yourself thinking the same things about your entry level college classes if you had been lucky enough to attend any? You can read a blog post about building bicycle wheels in five minutes and get most everything you'd gain from going to a weeklong course, but the difference is all in how you'd engage with it. A longer discussion, open area for questions, and building familiarity with the material drive the skill home whereas that 5 minute blog post might as well disappear into the depths of memory the second you navigate elsewhere. I took the course and while I agree that I wanted more depth, it certainly wasn't "vacuous" given the context. And it should be noted, the materials of the course follow some of the concepts taught within - they're doing their best to make sure you learn their basic concepts of how to learn.

gregw134 8y ago

You're missing fast.ai for machine learning. It's been mentioned or linked 700+ times on HN.

yaj54 8y ago
I'll need to take the fast.ai course first so that I can upgrade my course-extraction-from-text code from regexes to deep learning. ;-)
_u2kt 8y ago
agree - fast.ai is a fantastic resource - i wish everything i want to learn about was taught in it's very practical style

jefflombardjr 8y ago

Love this! Thank you!

tyagis 8y ago

The pop-up to subscribe every 2 seconds is extremely off-putting. Made me want to just close the tab multiple times. The curated content only kept me from doing it. Edit: Nice work! Next steps would be to sort and collate similar topics.

yaj54 8y ago
Ick, that is a bug. Mind sending me details on your browser setup? yaj@the-domain-of-the-linked-story.

xchaotic 8y ago

The biggest concern I have with this is that it promotes what's already popular to the top. This means Blockchain and crypto are there and I doubt that's the most valuable thing you can learn this year.

DarthMader 8y ago

I wonder if anyone ever made a list of paid only courses worth it. Now that would be really novel.

samstave 8y ago

It would be helpful to be able to filter between free and paid off the main list.

mettamage 8y ago

Hmm... where are Gilbert Strang his courses? He is recommended quite a bit, isn't he?

feluso 8y ago

I've been looking for something like this, thank you a lot! I wonder if something similar exists for HN book recommendations?

james_s_tayler 8y ago
Just Google HN book threads.

Dowwie 8y ago

Going to recommend the most widely taken course at Yale at the moment, which fortunately is now available as a MOOC on coursera, "The Science of Well Being": https://www.coursera.org/learn/the-science-of-well-being https://www.coursera.org/learn/the-science-of-well-being This is a positive psychology course based on work by Seligman et al.

mattnewport 8y ago
Would this be Seligman of "none of my positive psychology results replicate" fame?
- colechristensen 8y ago
  Could you provide more information or sources about that?
- Dowwie 8y ago
  Does this mean you're not signing up for the course? :D
- barry-cotter 8y ago
  Do Positive Psychology Exercises Work? A Replication of Seligman et al. (2005) Results: Repeated measures analyses showed that the PPEs led to lasting increases in happiness, as did the positive placebo. The PPEs did not exceed the control condition in producing changes in depression over time. Conclusions: Brief, positive psychology interventions may boost happiness through a common factor involving the activation of positive, self-relevant information rather than through other specific mechanisms. Finally, the effects of PPEs on depression may be more modest than previously assumed. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Myriam_Mongrain/publication/259956843_Do_Positive_Psychology_Exercises_Work_A_Replication_of_Seligman_et_al/links/5a370f73aca27247ede1c782/Do-Positive-Psychology-Exercises-Work-A-Replication-of-Seligman-et-al.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Myriam_Mongrain/publica...
  - mattnewport 8y ago

sandov 8y ago

I didn't even know there was an academy TLD. Is it saturated yet?

fhars 8y ago

Looks like the list counts complaints that a course does not exist as a recommendation, or why is the Crypto II course on coursere in the list? What was the original start date, September 2014 or 2013?

lbj 8y ago

Where's SICP ?

a_naughty_mouse 8y ago

- Sponsered by Coursera

wpmoradi 8y ago

This is awesome!

taherchhabra 8y ago

I like the idea. Would be interesting to see Gadgets recommended by HN users, Travel destinations recommended by HN users, Books recommended by HN users, Games recommended by HN users Movies recommended by HN users

RustingSword 8y ago
As for books, there's already Hacker News Books https://hackernewsbooks.com/top-books-on-hacker-news https://hackernewsbooks.com/top-books-on-hacker-news
yaj54 8y ago
Indeed. Categories where there are authoritative urls are the low hanging fruit. A previous related work of mine is TechYaks [0], which ranks software tech talks using (among other signals) HN recommends. I have another one in the pipe... [0]: https://techyaks.com/ https://techyaks.com/

state_less 8y ago

Recommendations and upvotes are a neat little signal to make sticky content rise to the top. This site is a great example.

Asparagirl 8y ago

This is a useful site, but you should probably disclose on it somewhere that you're getting affiliate revenue from every person clicking through and signing up for Coursera courses through your links...

yaj54 8y ago
I do, on every course page. Big grey box.
- Asparagirl 8y ago
  I missed that and I am an idiot. Mea culpa.

smarttack 8y ago

You know these are all affiliate links?

_lpa_ 8y ago
I'm curious - do you think affiliate links are a problem, and if so, why?
- GrumpyCoder 8y ago
  I have seen lots of udemy affiliate link spam on "learn programming" type subreddits. They use alt-accounts for fake reviews and make affiliate links looks like regular links. I'm okay with them as long as there is transparency and don't start a spam race.
mxschumacher 8y ago
they are affiliate links, yes.

hyperpallium 8y ago

The calculus course appears twice (same eventual URL), with different HN citations. > Calculus: Single Variable Part 1 - Functions Coursera · University of Pennsylvania https://www.coursera.org/learn/single-variable-calculus https://www.coursera.org/learn/single-variable-calculus

hyperpallium 8y ago

Is there a sort of "axiomatic high school maths" course, that builds up from the basics without handwaving? i.e. that covers the actual reasons and proofs for things, not just the mechanics/tricks/techniques. The way geometry is taught. Some might be beyond high school level, like fundamental theorems of arithmetic (unique prime factorization) and algebra (polynomial factors/zeros). There's also non-integer exponents, defining reals etc. All this stuff is used in High School but must be taken on faith. Good for believers, bad for skeptics. Or is this just Mathematics 101? [my engineering maths didn't cover it]

rjblackman 8y ago
Not a course but I believe Mathematics: Its Content, Methods and Meaning by A.D. Aleksandrov, A.N. Kolmogorov , M.A. Lavrent'ev may cover this in book form. (FWIW I have not read this, but intend to at some point)
- sonabinu 8y ago
  It’s an amazing book! And very well written. Totally understandable!
psyklic 8y ago
I highly recommend the courses on brilliant.org. They are not axiomatic, but they heavily focus on building up deep insight rather than mechanical problem solving -- https://brilliant.org https://brilliant.org. That said, for a rigorous proof-based approach to high school math, you may enjoy "Basic Mathematics" by Lang: https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Mathematics-Serge-Lang/dp/0387967877 https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Mathematics-Serge-Lang/dp/03879...

heyjudy 8y ago

I'm looking for, and haven't yet found, a practical-as-possible, intermediate language design |& compiler design MOOC video course. Ideas appreciated.

yahnu 8y ago
I haven't taken these courses yet but Automata Theory is in my todo list. These are offered through Stanford Lagunita (Stanford's implementation of openedX) * Compilers: https://lagunita.stanford.edu/courses/Engineering/Compilers/Fall2014/about https://lagunita.stanford.edu/courses/Engineering/Compilers/... * Automata Theory: https://lagunita.stanford.edu/courses/course-v1:ComputerScience+Automata+SelfPaced/about https://lagunita.stanford.edu/courses/course-v1:ComputerScie...

reckemal 8y ago

thanks!

paraschopra 8y ago

I’m planning to enroll in statistical mechanics course. Anyone else wants to team up and study as a group? We may finish faster that way. Email me: paras1987 <at> gmail

mrhappyunhappy 8y ago

Any list like this one for finance / investing material? Thanks for the resource - will be put to good use. I’d love it if there were categories for paid, non-paid and overall most recommended.

arvinsim 8y ago
Chalk me as one of those interested too. I decided that it was worth learning mastering that domain rather than continue on expanding my technical programming skills.

maroonblazer 8y ago

I took the one and only Linear Algebra course cited in this list and did not care for it. I found Strang's MIT course on the subject much better. I seem to recall reading other's had the same experience. Perhaps we need a separate index that's just YT (and Vimeo?)?

nl 8y ago

Recommendations need to decay by date more. Eg, the Johns Hopkins University "Data Science" course isn't worth doing (unless maybe it has been updated?), and note that most of the comments are pre-2017. It's an R course, but it teaches pre-Tidyverse R. Also it's not a great course in that the assignments aren't synced to the lectures - you need to know lots of stuff which haven't been touched on to complete the assignments at each stage. (Source: I did it in 2014 or 15)

aashu_dwivedi 8y ago

I am curious to know how you built it, do you keep polling for the new a items on the HN? How do you figure out if it's a course? Do you use regexes for it or something more sophisticated / complecated?

gauravgupta 8y ago

Hackr.io does something very similar.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]