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Awesome work! I can't wait to test this on my non-programmer friends who want to learn how to code. This seems to have a somewhat different approach to the usu

by idoby 7y ago

Awesome work! I can't wait to test this on my non-programmer friends who want to learn how to code. This seems to have a somewhat different approach to the usual Python tutorial, it might do the trick! Thanks

webartifex 7y ago
I tried to put in everything I myself would have wanted to know when starting in 2014. That is why I spend so much time on the memory diagrams in the videos in particular. It literally took me years to figure that out. I have watched a lot of online lectures (e.g., from OCW), but only rarely do instructors talk about that. Maybe formally studying CS would have done the trick for me as well :)
- idoby 7y ago
  It's not necessarily covered in a traditional CS program, it really depends on the instructor. This is a good resource. Regarding the videos: they're hard to watch because the text size is very small and it seems to be blurry due to compression/encoding issues and in some of the videos, the audio track has a high-pitched hum in the background that makes it very hard to listen to. If you still have access to the source materials, you should seriously consider cleaning up the sound and re-encoding the videos for better quality (as well as making the text bigger where possible).
  - webartifex 7y ago
    Two videos have the hum. This cannot be changed because the lecture capture system in the lecture room does not allow this (It's Panopto). The quality is actually high enough. Maybe that is due as YouTube is currently lowering the quality due to Corona? My plan is to incorporate the feedback everyone gives in the next weeks and do the recordings again in studio at the end of summer for the next semester. The videos are actually intended to only support the chapters in the Jupyter notebooks. The funny thing is this: Once I started doing the memory diagrams in the lecture, the students' work exhibited a lot more quality. Further, absolute beginners understand, for example, the concept of an iterator vs. iterable. BTW: chapters 9 and 10 will be released soon on GitHub.
    - idoby 7y ago
      > The quality is actually high enough. Maybe that is due as YouTube is currently lowering the quality due to Corona? Maybe. Also, for newer videos YouTube takes a while to expose higher qualities. I see now that the videos have very few views and that only 720p is available. This could also be the reason. > Two videos have the hum. This cannot be changed because the lecture capture system in the lecture room does not allow this (It's Panopto). You can probably get rid of the hum pretty easily with pretty basic filtering in a video/audio program (or even a Python library). You might also be able to re-upload just the audio tracks. Just say if you want my help with this. > The funny thing is this: Once I started doing the memory diagrams in the lecture, the students' work exhibited a lot more quality. Further, absolute beginners understand, for example, the concept of an iterator vs. iterable. I'm not surprised. I've been saying for a while now, that learning programming is analogous to learning how to play an instrument (e.g. the piano) where you need to learn the right techniques and concepts early on if you want to be able to become highly skilled later on. Otherwise it's unlearning and relearning a bunch of stuff, which is less than optimal. Thank you for validating this idea of mine, somewhat.
      - webartifex 7y ago
        The videos are actually available in 1080p. If you can re-do the audio and tell me how I can do that in YouTube without re-uploading the video (it's embedded, for example, in the university's Moodle), I will gladly do that. If not, as I said, I'll do proper recordings once I got more time. I did up to 4x 2.5 hour videos a day last week to get the lectures up on time. You can actually hear that in my voice sometimes. I absolutely agree with your approach to learning.
  - webartifex 7y ago
    Can anyone recommend a good document camera / visualizer that works on Ubuntu Linux? The reason I had to use the lecture capture system in the lecture rooms is mainly because I don't own a document cam. Ideally, the cam would also work with Zoom. Many thanks in advance.

by idoby 7y ago

webartifex 7y ago

I tried to put in everything I myself would have wanted to know when starting in 2014. That is why I spend so much time on the memory diagrams in the videos in particular. It literally took me years to figure that out. I have watched a lot of online lectures (e.g., from OCW), but only rarely do instructors talk about that. Maybe formally studying CS would have done the trick for me as well :)

idoby 7y ago
It's not necessarily covered in a traditional CS program, it really depends on the instructor. This is a good resource. Regarding the videos: they're hard to watch because the text size is very small and it seems to be blurry due to compression/encoding issues and in some of the videos, the audio track has a high-pitched hum in the background that makes it very hard to listen to. If you still have access to the source materials, you should seriously consider cleaning up the sound and re-encoding the videos for better quality (as well as making the text bigger where possible).
- webartifex 7y ago
  Two videos have the hum. This cannot be changed because the lecture capture system in the lecture room does not allow this (It's Panopto). The quality is actually high enough. Maybe that is due as YouTube is currently lowering the quality due to Corona? My plan is to incorporate the feedback everyone gives in the next weeks and do the recordings again in studio at the end of summer for the next semester. The videos are actually intended to only support the chapters in the Jupyter notebooks. The funny thing is this: Once I started doing the memory diagrams in the lecture, the students' work exhibited a lot more quality. Further, absolute beginners understand, for example, the concept of an iterator vs. iterable. BTW: chapters 9 and 10 will be released soon on GitHub.
  - idoby 7y ago
    > The quality is actually high enough. Maybe that is due as YouTube is currently lowering the quality due to Corona? Maybe. Also, for newer videos YouTube takes a while to expose higher qualities. I see now that the videos have very few views and that only 720p is available. This could also be the reason. > Two videos have the hum. This cannot be changed because the lecture capture system in the lecture room does not allow this (It's Panopto). You can probably get rid of the hum pretty easily with pretty basic filtering in a video/audio program (or even a Python library). You might also be able to re-upload just the audio tracks. Just say if you want my help with this. > The funny thing is this: Once I started doing the memory diagrams in the lecture, the students' work exhibited a lot more quality. Further, absolute beginners understand, for example, the concept of an iterator vs. iterable. I'm not surprised. I've been saying for a while now, that learning programming is analogous to learning how to play an instrument (e.g. the piano) where you need to learn the right techniques and concepts early on if you want to be able to become highly skilled later on. Otherwise it's unlearning and relearning a bunch of stuff, which is less than optimal. Thank you for validating this idea of mine, somewhat.
    - webartifex 7y ago
      The videos are actually available in 1080p. If you can re-do the audio and tell me how I can do that in YouTube without re-uploading the video (it's embedded, for example, in the university's Moodle), I will gladly do that. If not, as I said, I'll do proper recordings once I got more time. I did up to 4x 2.5 hour videos a day last week to get the lectures up on time. You can actually hear that in my voice sometimes. I absolutely agree with your approach to learning.
- webartifex 7y ago
  Can anyone recommend a good document camera / visualizer that works on Ubuntu Linux? The reason I had to use the lecture capture system in the lecture rooms is mainly because I don't own a document cam. Ideally, the cam would also work with Zoom. Many thanks in advance.