30 ms·

Most of the time, you don’t really need another MOOC

194 points by 7d7n 6y ago

culopatin 6y ago
As a noob, I feel this. The weird thing is that I am very well aware that tutorials only feel good because I see progress, but that progress is empty. I am aware that confronting a personal project really settles that knowledge in, but I still postpone personal projects whenever I think “I don’t really understand what this means, maybe I should just finish that online course and I’ll be ready”. Also fighting perfection over progress is tough. “This is not the best way of doing it” is constantly in my head when trying to do thing, which is mental space that could be used towards figuring out the next step. But I finally started, as stupid and useless as it may sound, I’m just making a counter in Java that stores that in a MySQL database. Why? Idk, I am learning how to connect my program to a DB, the quirks to learn from that, and then I plan on doing this from a browser. I also plan on trying SQLite because MySQL is overkill, and so just by doing this simple thing I learn a bunch of things going down the rabbit hole. Does anyone need an app with a button that just adds a number to a row? No, but the different aspects of getting that to run with no errors are what’s important to me.
- theastrowolfe 6y ago
  > Fighting perfection over progress is tough. I agree. The struggle is real when trying to learn the "right" way to do something. However, progress can still happen (even if it is in the "wrong" direction). I'm okay scrapping a feature or even an entire project when trying something new. I've learned how not to do something and, more importantly, the reason behind that.
- deleted 6y ago
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- dceddia 6y ago
  Love it, I think that’s a great approach. Build a bunch of tiny “stupid” things of increasing complexity and before long you’ll step back and realize how much you’ve improved. I trying to instill this in folks as I teach React - rather than building some portfolio masterpiece out the gate, do a bunch of little fun things to build skills and confidence. The trouble with any of this stuff is that no course/book/tutorial can prepare you for every eventuality, and sooner or later you’re going to want to do a thing that nobody explicitly taught you, with a combination of tools that differs from any tutorial you can find. I think building up skills in the way you’re doing it is great preparation for that eventuality.
- lamename 6y ago
  You may be a self-described noob at whatever you're learning, but it's clear from your outlook that you've had substantial work or life experience to understand complexity as a general phenomenon (i.e. expecting unexpected errors, requiring depth of learning in yourself). Incremental custom projects is a good way to learn -- not everything has to be "useful for others", especially where learning and practice is concerned.
- MauranKilom 6y ago
  I find the most important thing when learning anything new is a "safe harbor" to explore from. That's why "Hello world!" is so fundamental. And that's why a counter stored into a database is one of the biggest steps you can make - you've wedged the door open and it can't possibly fall shut again. Everything else is incremental from there. And if something doesn't work, you know you can just go a step back and reassess, without starting from zero. Writing code is beautiful like that. I wish you many productive struggles and subsequent successes in your journey!
chrisaycock 6y ago
MOOCs are for introducing a new topic; they can't make you an expert in anything. I like the occasional (as in, literally once a year) MOOC to see something completely outside my specific profession. But the only way to get good within my profession is hands-on activity. It's similar to reading HN, or even ACM/IEEE articles. All of that stuff is for seeing new material, not for getting better at my bread and butter.
jonnycomputer 6y ago
For me the problem really is this: I want or need to do X, and to do that I need to know Y, which is a subset of knowledge domain Z, and I only really have time to learn Y. Sometimes I can get away with learning only Y, but most of the time not spending all that time learning Z means I've only thought I've learned Y, and as soon as something doesn't work as expected, I'm stuck. What I miss is what I (almost) had in college: the chance to learn in depth not tied to a particular instrumental outcome.
agumonkey 6y ago
I agree that MOOCs are very removed from the reality of building something. The unknown territory, the false starts, the unknown unknowns, gradual refinements, new requirements.. It's a whole different field in itself. Which is adult/pro life I guess. It also leads to a vastly different feeling, it's not knowing for the sake of knowing, it's know-how. It has social value. ps: this brings a question, is there a way to teach that knowledge beside jumping in the pool ?
mariodiana 6y ago
If you find a really good tutorial by programmers who are both excellent teachers and experienced in that particular field, it beats JIT learning on a personal project in one important respect. You get exposure to the One True Way of doing things. What do I mean? Years ago, I learned to program iOS from the Big Nerd Ranch book. The most important thing I got out of that was learning enough about the Cocoa-Touch framework that I didn't try to fight the framework. You don't get that from JIT learning. How could you? That said, at the end of the book the authors urged the reader to go and write programs — that that was the only way to learn, after mastering the fundamentals. A beginner should place his or trust in an expert. The reason is that the big mistake beginners make, not knowing the fundamentals, is convincing themselves way too early that they have now grasped the fundamentals. I don't think the author and I are at odds. I agree a person can get too comfortable with MOOCs, YouTube courses, etc. But at the start, there is no substitute. And the start lasts longer than you may think.
- julianlam 6y ago
  > But at the start, there is no substitute. And the start lasts longer than you may think. Don't worry, he explicitly says this at the top. > Don’t get me wrong, I love MOOCs. They’re great for trying to learn a new programming language (e.g., Python, Scala) or framework (e.g., Spark, TensorFlow) or subject (e.g., statistics, machine learning). The structured learning environment, excellent teaching, and exercises (and solutions) guide us through the best way to learn new concepts. > >But most of the time, we don’t really need it. If we already know machine learning, taking that shiny new MOOC won’t help with applying it more effectively.
- VBprogrammer 6y ago
  As with so many things in life the best way probably doesn't live at either extreme. Often times I'll read about a subject and not fully understand it (and probably not even take the extra time to fully understand it) but when the problem comes up organically a light bulb goes off and I at least know what I'm googling for at that point.
- krmmalik 6y ago
  Continuing on with this train of thought, I agree with you. I'm not a programmer but I once had to learn how to use networking software for real world implementations, things like mailservers, firewalls etc etc. I did a fair bit of JIT but finally got hold of some courses for each piece of software. The bump in my knowledge and understanding was raised by a few orders of magnitude that almost 15 years later has still stuck with me. It's about funding the right expert as you say. The right person is invaluable.
Gys 6y ago
MOOC in case you were wondering like me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_open_online_course https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_open_online_course
- elaus 6y ago
  I wish articles would at least explain acronyms the first time they're mentioned. Just putting the full form in parenthesis would go a long way and not disturb readers that already know them. Maybe it's because I'm not a native speaker, but I have never heard of MOOCs before – and I'm consuming a lot of content in English on a daily basis (e.g. on HN).
  - uberswe 6y ago
    I'm a native speaker and I had never heard of it before either. From reading the title I thought this was about creating content and teaching others programming since MOC sometimes stands for My Own Creation.
  - deleted 6y ago
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- MauranKilom 6y ago
  Plea for future article writers: It won't kill you to hyperlink the first occurrence of acronyms (especially titular ones) in the block text. Those ten seconds will not only save hundreds of readers time (even if they only mouse over the link to see the expansion in the Wikipedia page title). It will also prevent readers opening your article, seeing the same unexplained acronym mentioned every second sentence and deciding that a google search with an unknown amount of "figuring out which of all the results matches the article context" is not worth their time.
- EL_Loco 6y ago
  JIT in case you were wondering like me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-in-time_learning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-in-time_learning
Blackthorn 6y ago
TFA really only applies to basic new software topics. I'm doing a course in biochemistry right now. It's literally the recording of a course taught at OSU that the professor was extremely generous to make and post on YouTube (thank you, Dr. Ahern!). I'm not sure how I'd ever learn biochemistry without it, seeing as I'm not in college anymore.
- tastyfreeze 6y ago
  I buy college textbooks if a topic really piques my interest. A good textbook combined with free lectures is great way to learn.
jimmyswimmy 6y ago
It had never occurred to me to wait for a class to teach me something. Just go out and learn it! If there are no references (books, wiki, blog, training resources) it's great fun to go your own way and figure it out from scratch. Usually there are some shoulders to stand on and reading a quick paper is fine well spent, but in every niche area it's best not to spend too long searching for that paper. Just do. Learn along the way. I suppose in less niche areas it might be better to spend more time finding good tutorials, but even then, we learn much more when we do, not when we listen.
zanny 6y ago
I've picked up drawing in the last few years, probably because it occupies enough overlap with the centers of my brain I trained to code but also is outside the envelope enough to still feel like something different from my day job. Its basically the same thing there too. Honestly you need both structured learning and lived experience in both, and probably in most skills in life. If you don't have the structure you will meander aimlessly solving "problems" and "getting better" (at code or art) but never actually getting anywhere with it. If you only have the structure you will never be able to actually make anything truly new because you can't solve the novel problems in the trenches. Start something new with structure but rapidly push yourself to start using that regimented curriculum to make new stuff. And then when you enter a new problem domain (you learned Python and want to start doing networking or you know how to draw but want to paint) you switch back to a regimented curriculum to start till you get that 20% baseline knowledge to build off of again.
angarg12 6y ago
Many years ago I used to be very proactive about my learning. I read tons of books, did MOOCs, tutorials, learnt new tools and frameworks... What I found with time is that I forgot most of those. Except for the very basic and foundational concepts, anything that I haven't kept practicing is almost gone. I can't even remember most of the courses or books I've read. Even worse, in some cases I ended up actually using that cool tool that I learnt 3 years ago. Guess what, now it is 2 major versions ahead and most of what I knew is useless anyway. I love the reference to JIT learning in the article. This has been my primary way of learning for the past few years: wait until I'm facing a problem, and then put the effort to learn enough to solve it. I still do some background explorative learning, but JIT is much more efficient and effective.
- robbyking 6y ago
  > Anything that I haven't kept practicing is almost gone. I think that's true of any method of learning. I once took a class on a proprietary audio visual language, and a year of so later my manager asked me to write some control software using that language, and I basically had to start from scratch. On the other hand, I took Stanford's first MOOC Swift Class, and have been using Swift as my primary language ever since.
  - parenthesis 6y ago
    I find the learning something again for the second (or nth) time is at least easier than it was the first time.
    - vxNsr 6y ago
      Very much this. I'll take MOOCS read an article and then feel like I forgot everything only to have a much easier time "learning" it the second time when it becomes practical.
- elliekelly 6y ago
  > anything that I haven't kept practicing is almost gone. I can't even remember most of the courses or books I've read. I don’t think this is unique to MOOCs. I think this is a fact of life.
gennarro 6y ago
Pretty serious title mismatch here.
deleted 6y ago
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ksm1717 6y ago
Everyone knows these are 90% for credential building vs skills, why are they desirable for hirers? I feel like it creates some self fulfilling prophecy of “these credentials are useful because other people have them”.
- somerandomqaguy 6y ago
  Easy to create keyword filters for when sifting though many resumes perhaps?
qntty 6y ago
Off topic, but I find it very off-putting when people write blog posts using "we". Like speak for yourself, I have my own reasons for doing things. It's to the point where I don't even pay attention to what the person is saying because they're being so presumptive in telling me what I think. Which is weird, because I really enjoy the convention of using we in math.
- kylebenzle 6y ago
  Maybe the former seems pushy while the latter is inclusive. Math is about discovery and we are all in the same boat. A marketer saying "we are all in this together" feels manipulative.
- fantod 6y ago
  After years in academia, it's incredible how much conscious effort I have to put into writing (or giving a talk) without using "we".
mandeepj 6y ago
We should ban these personal rant posts like 1. Stop doing ** 2. Why I don't like ** 3. You should not ** It's your personal thing. Don't like certain thing - try to do it your own way. Can't do it then change your attitude.
- CivBase 6y ago
  I like learning about other people's opinions, even if they're just opinions. They help me refine my own. Besides, not everyone has the ability to "do it your own way". Sharing opinions like this can be a good way to determine if there's value in an idea and maybe even get help if needed.
- sterlinm 6y ago
  I think you need to make the case for banning them with a series of articles: 1. Stop Posting Rants on Hacker News 2. Why I Don't Like People Writing About Disliking Things 3. You Should Not Tell People Not To Do Things
- rnd0 6y ago
  "Stop posting stories I don't like!" /s Seriously though? It's useful to see people's perspective and the discussion around them (and personally speaking, I come to HN for the discussion) is useful and insightful -often more so than the original article. Click-baity titles are annoying, though. I'll grant you that...
minimaxir 6y ago
I wrote a similar article 2 years ago (https://minimaxir.com/2018/10/data-science-protips/ https://minimaxir.com/2018/10/data-science-protips/) arguing against MOOCs for learning data science/machine learning skills, as they are not reflective of real world applications. I'm all for personal projects especially in DS/ML (it's how I started my career in the field), but the unfortunate reality is that there's really no way nowadays to learn the hard/boring parts of DS/ML without already having a DS/ML job. Any attempts at an analogous MOOC/YouTube would likely not be very popular. That said, the DS/ML job market 2 years later is even more competitive, and niche personal projects on your resume are no longer enough. Even after working as a data scientist for 3 years, I'm not confident I could get another DS/ML job.
- kylebenzle 6y ago
  How horribly disappointing. I'm at the tail end of a 6 month, $17,000 online DS bootcamp. I've got some great projects and learned a ton but yeh, they seem to be slowly preparing to let us down. They keep saying how hard it will be to find a job and may take months. LOL, I'm screwed.
  - nefitty 6y ago
    The frame of mind that kept me going was focusing on my effort, instead of an outcome. I visualized my effort by tracking job applications. I applied to a lot, so at the end of the day, that metric is what made me feel successful at the end of the day, not necessarily whether some inundated recruiter emailed me back.
  - deleted 6y ago
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  - superbcarrot 6y ago
    It's down to the market. There aren't that many beginner or mid-level jobs in the field and there is a big oversupply of candidates. I wouldn't recommend data science or machine learning to people who are changing career direction or need to invest a lot of time/money/effort to catch up with all the theory. Not that it's impossible, just very hard. It's also getting more and more gatekept over time with increasing requirements for advanced degrees.
drivingmenuts 6y ago
I can usually spend more time and effort coming up with something worth the time and effort than actually taking a course.
zhte415 6y ago
Stop doing click-bait titles.
yonif 6y ago
This post seems to be addressing a specific phenomena and I tend to agree. I don't see the point in doing more than 1-2 introduction-level courses. I'll take this chance to recommend 2 phenomenal free MOOCs: 1. Nand2Tetris[1] which really nails giving the realization (of not understanding just HOW MUCH) complexity there is in the layers upon layers of abstractions programmers use. 2. An introduction to Logic[2] via programming course (by one of the authors of the previous MOOC, Noam Nissan), which introduces logic (an overview that ultimately ends with Godel's completeness/incompleteness) in a relatively (to the rigorous math) approachable manner. The one caveat is the book is still a work in progress, and it has many parts that are not well written. [1]: https://www.nand2tetris.org/ https://www.nand2tetris.org/ [2]: https://www.logicthrupython.org/ https://www.logicthrupython.org/
NickM 6y ago
Maybe this is true for some topics. Yeah, a lot of times you can pick up a new programming language by playing around with it. I don't think most people will have much luck learning say, advanced mathematics by just futzing around and skimming Wikipedia though. Even topics like ML (an example referenced by the original post) benefit greatly from an understanding of theory and fundamentals. Yeah maybe any random dev can hack together a model by downloading scikit-learn and throwing data at it, but you'll probably get much better results if you take the time to learn about concepts like cross-validation, overfitting, etc. The "just do stuff" attitude has its merits, but there's also something to be said for working from first principles and learning some theory to back up your applied skills.
compscistd 6y ago
I think MOOCs are great for the thing you've been sorta kinda interested in but didn't know where to start. Around the 0%-20% background-info ballpark. For me, my most successful MOOCs have been: - CS50 at they very beginning of my career ~2015 that brought me to the fundamentals of CS and all that it can do in a very fun way. - Jazz Appreciation from UTAustin (https://www.edx.org/course/jazz-appreciation-3 https://www.edx.org/course/jazz-appreciation-3). I lived near a Jazz club and I often heard snippets of performances while walking by, but I felt like I needed a music background to really appreciate what I was hearing. I randomly spotted this course and I learned which eras of Jazz I like best, common themes in music, common instrument combinations, and the final project encouraged me to go listen to Jazz myself. It's become a fun part of my life in a way that a short YouTube intro or just walking into the club wouldn't have been able to inspire. Part of that was likely the predefined path it offered and Jeffrey Helmer's enthusiasm for teaching the course. Ultimately, MOOCs can very well be a way to procrastinate on a professional or personal level from just diving into the thing you already have the basics for. But it can just as easily be a way to open you up to something you never thought was in your wheelhouse in a structured path. Blog posts, documentation, and most YouTube videos are too static to serve an absolute beginner that needs questions answered early, consistently, and frequently.
lsalvatore 6y ago
This is as ridiculous as saying "Stop watching videos". Everyone's online courses and video content is completely different and unique to their level of experience. Most online courses hold your hand through building a project: that's a good thing, for those who want that content.
wayeq 6y ago
Just knowing the basics and then diving into tinkering risks wasting a lot of your time making mistakes that other people have already made and learned from. If the point of the article is "don't do online course at the exclusion of everything else", that is just common sense.
MauranKilom 6y ago
> "Doing that MOOC/Masters gives me a certificate that helps my resume." I have to mirror an observation I've read on here that matches my retrospective view: Job applicants with multiple online course certificates tend to do poorly in technical interviews. <tangent> This may in part be a failing of our education systems. "Be taught about something -> write test -> pass/no pass" is usually all there is, and this system of how knowledge is valued becomes ingrained in students. Sure, tests usually contain sections of "applying" the knowledge, but ultimately it's still studying to and because of the test. If you're lucky enough to be both versed in a subject and visit a school that provides extra-curricular engagement on these subjects, you may get a glimpse of what it feels like to solve a challenge because you want to. Otherwise you have do that completely separately from whatever formal education you receive. It has personally taken me many years and several key experiences outside of school to fully grok that presentations aren't just condensing a topic you don't care about into a scheme somebody else dictates, held in front of an audience that would rather be elsewhere. Or that playing music isn't just about getting the notes and their volumes right. But now I deeply enjoy both. I would imagine that many are similarly stuck with a terrible mindset regarding learning or problem solving due to the way they were educated, even if they would find it exhilarating with the right frame of mind. </tangent> So yeah, show off your self-directed projects in your resume. Thrill your interviewers with the cool problems you tackled. Mention key challenges you overcame. Without exaggerating too much, I would say online course certificates are as indicative of your technical abilities as a screenshot of a completed Tensorflow download. And that extends to the message you send if you include them in your application.
- vxNsr 6y ago
  This is interesting in that you're advocating for a lot more CE than many other fields require or look for. More and more it's becoming apparent that CS needs a standards body and a more structured learning process. As many people feel that no matter how much extra time they put in it's not enough.
utdiscant 6y ago
This is basically the reason we are building Eduflow (www.eduflow.com), a learning management system for active learning. Some things can and should be learned by a series of videos, but if you want to learn a real skill deeply, then you need to engage with the material in some way.
compacct27 6y ago
Anyone who's professionally coding right now has one super-effective option that's rarely talked about: Hire someone knowledgeable to walk you through what you're learning. I've been doing a heavy C++ project, and as a web developer, I was basically a walking footgun. I realized this early on, hired a total expert in the field (the guy has contributed to C++ standards committees before), and am Loving how smoothly this project is going thanks to learning from him. It's incredibly fun. I pay the guy $150/hr in 10 hour chunks and get the most in-depth insight into what I'm doing, how to revise my code, what the code means in the first place, etc. It's perfect if you know how to code but find yourself in a brand new domain. I still learn outside of our hour-long mentor sessions, of course. Skip the MOOC, hire the teacher. ..and then also do the MOOC, honestly they're pretty great.
- UncleOxidant 6y ago
  > $150/hr in 10 hour chunks and get the most in-depth insight into what I'm doing Yeah, it's... an option, I guess, if you've got the dough. Many of us don't have that kind of budget so we look for some of those experts who have blogs and youtube channels.
  - compacct27 6y ago
    That's totally fair, this guy is on the higher end and this is the only project I'd be willing to pay that for. You can find one for less, though, if you ever find yourself wanting one. Mentor.io is a good place for it.
  - commandlinefan 6y ago
    I'm trying to figure out what I know well enough to charge $150/hour to teach people now...
    - pvarangot 6y ago
      I've charged that rate and it's usually veeeery niche knowledge that somehow seems to combine more than 10 years of experience. Like I worked in information security and aerospace and am a C/C++ coder and someone is thinking about a software product that's a C++ library for securely communicating with satellites. I'm usually contacted by engineers or companies that do market surveys and have the detailed knowledge of my background, so doing a lot of those (which are usually also compensated at like 40 to 60 per hour) pays off. I haven't been able to engage in any of these for two years now because I moved to the US on an H1B visa, but the offers still keep on coming. I got like five in 2019 and two in 2020 and I had to say no.
afterwalk 6y ago
I personally alternate between taking courses and doing projects. Doing all MOOC is bad for some of the reasons the articles covered. But doing all projects is also sub-optimal because sometimes it is hard to know what you don't know. Balancing theory and practice works the best for me.
osoba 6y ago
Tbh any MOOC that "needs only 2-4 hours a week" is, by design, an entry level course and taking more of those won't help you progress. On the other hand, you shouldn't lump together and dismiss all MOOCs as there are plenty of more advanced ones that will definitely make a difference. For example, 90% of MIT classes such as Intro to Statistics https://www.edx.org/course/fundamentals-of-statistics https://www.edx.org/course/fundamentals-of-statistics or CMU Deep Learning http://deeplearning.cs.cmu.edu/ http://deeplearning.cs.cmu.edu/
commandlinefan 6y ago
> You just need to know enough to start; the rest you’ll pick up along the way. Hmmm... I guess that's technically true (and eventually you do need to start), but I've seen a lot of people continue to code in very inefficient ways because they actually don't know that a better way even exists. If you're not starting because you're not done learning, you're probably not doing it right, but if you're done learning because you've started, you're also not doing it right.
jamses 6y ago
I found early-on that MOOCs were terrible for learning because of the barriers they put up. Locked-in time schedules, a trend towards very short "bitty" and simplistic videos that don't tend to offer any direction when they're done. Youtube lectures on the other hand have been immensely valuable, especially if you can find a relevant (university) reading list and/or problem sets if they're applicable. All you really need as a self-learner is someone to say "head in this direction". After that I agree with op that finding something fun to do is the best way to learn. On an aside, as a text highlighter (I highlight the text I'm reading), the javascript "tweet this" pop-up on this site is horrific.
duxup 6y ago
As someone who was largely self taught in the past 3 years, my biggest frustration with learning on the go online has been the flexibility of the code / lack of contest with free online resources. Yeah if I google how to build a widget to add to an application, I can find that. However, the widget is often so tightly coded that it couldn't ever be useful, it doesn't fit a given pattern or concept... it's JUST that widget. A widget that just adds +1 to a thing (an admittedly contrived example) might do the job for what I googled, but oh so often it is inflexible and doesn't really teach me much about WHY it was coded the way it did... it just produced an outcome that I googled.
nickjj 6y ago
I can't speak for how other folks run courses but to me the value of a course is a combination of having well tested code to use and access to full time support. If you bought a course on how to develop X with Y web framework and the course comes with lots of well written code, high test coverage and was extracted out of multiple real world projects that's basically buying a time machine because it might take you 6+ months to write the same code from scratch and you won't have the insights gathered from years of practical experience. Or even worse you might never get started because you get trapped by information paralysis. I know a few people who have taken my https://buildasaasappwithflask.com/ https://buildasaasappwithflask.com/ course and built very successful businesses in less than a year. One of them is making $90,000 / month and initially spent like 4 months customizing the code from the course to do what his service needed to do. Note: The TL;DR on the above course is it's not a course on how to find a SAAS app idea. It's focused on how to build the SAAS app itself using Flask, Docker, Stripe, etc..
__mharrison__ 6y ago
(Disclaimer: I make my living teaching) Author is correct, most don't complete MOOC's (for various reasons). However a good teacher is like a coach and will grease the skids for learning. My experience teaching Python and Data Science at some of the biggest companies in the world is that you can be a professional and still have knowledge gaps. You don't know what you don't know. Once you fill in those gaps it can open many doors. I elaborate a bit on my blog: https://www.metasnake.com/blog/learn-python-2021.html https://www.metasnake.com/blog/learn-python-2021.html
omarhaneef 6y ago
What you can pick up from a video is a workflow you may not have though of. For example, I don't think beginners have the unix console open logged into the database, while they have another window with the back end code, and then the developer tools open at the same time so they can debug the flow "end to end" unless they are taught to do so. Sometime they may not think to think: why isn't the data appearing? did that data even get read into the database? Do I have to open the dbase now to see? 5 minutes of watching someone do it can save you years of learning that workflow.
dinglefairy 6y ago
hrrmm, any suggestions on personal projects that will make mill-i-ons? I'm half serious. like how can i make an algorithm that auto trades vwap starting with a $1000 account? anyone have links for projects in; building your own receiver. building a laser. building a 4 story walk up multi family unit. building a particle accelerator programming a kernel from scratch how to get a super hot mail order Russian bride for free how to convert your car to hydrogen cell how to create your own cannabis genetics i threw some in there to see if you're paying attention, but maybe there should be a thread for cool projects [not just github like].
christiansakai 6y ago
I keep seeing some of my LinkedIn social circles people posting their "Just finished <insert X> course". It is delusional. They hope to get noticed by people thus offer them a job? Sometimes I just out of curiosity go into their profile to see, and true enough, all of them are unemployed and have too much bs on their LinkedIn.
tropicalrun 6y ago
I'm curious what people here think about building projects in remote teams as a strategy for learning software developer skills? Could also apply to other related roles like UX/UI designers, product owners, etc. Specifically, after a certain base skill level has been reached. Also, these teams would include deadlines, navigating git/github, time management, communicating with others, etc. Full-disclosure: I'm a part of a community / startup that organizes such teams for learners. I don't want to be spammy so will refrain from saying the name. It actually grew out of a MOOC forum to help with some of the issues mentioned in OP's article. It ran for about 3 years free as a time-intensive side project, but switched to paid to reduce another common MOOC issue (ghosting).
calebkaiser 6y ago
In my personal experience, this isn't a question of either/or, it's a question of order. That is, courses are fantastic, but most of the time, they're more beneficial after you've done some JIT learning. Fastai, who in my opinion create the best educational resources in the deep learning space, are a great example of this. They use a metaphor involving sports to explain their approach. You don't learn to play a sport by pouring over rulebooks and studying professionals—you start playing. However, as you get a feel for the sport, you then find yourself in a position where learning a lot more about the theory of the game would make a huge difference to you, and that's where courses come in. Similarly, they get you off the ground quickly with some basic intuitions around deep learning, give you a sandbox to do some JIT learning, and then begin layering in deeper concepts. I've had similar experiences in my life, where taking graduate level courses was incredibly rewarding specifically in areas where I'd already spent a decent amount of time doing JIT learning—and arguably, where I'd reached a relative limit in how far JIT would take me.
dimmke 6y ago
I love the concept of "Just-in-time learning". I think it applies to other things too. In my personal life is when I am working on a large scope project, I tend to try to anticipate every single thing that I will have to do up front. But I've found I always miss something or misunderstand a requirement. It's way more efficient to just do things as they come up, and I'm trying to switch to that method more often. I definitely relate to taking some kind of programming related course and they teach you about something you will never use, that people rarely use in real world scenarios, but there's still a pressure to make sure I fully understand it.
someday_somehow 6y ago
I spent over a 100 hours working through MOOCs and video tutorials over the past month only to find out that all I would learn at the end would be the basics that wouldn't really be help if someone asked me to 'go build'. I'd have the same feeling even after completing an advanced level course. What we need are technical MOOCs that discuss what decisions to make when approaching a problem, evaluating trade-offs, what are the common practices you'd come across in a production environment and where the concept you learned fits in the big picture. I haven't found any MOOC that talks about the above in depth for web dev and the only youtuber I found who talks about this is TechLead but he mostly puts out 10 minute clips instead of complete tutorials. I've gone back to books and I'm learning much more per time spent studying something.
- spitfire 6y ago
  I thought tech lead was a satire (as a millionaire). Practical application is an area I've always thought was sorely lacking. There's lots of places to learn the theory, but I still don't get it until I understand the applications. Then I start to get a fingertip feel (Fingerspitzengefuhl if you want to come from a certain view). Whenever I see "Application is left as an exercise for the reader", I read that as "I don't actually understand the subject well enough to teach it fully".
  - someday_somehow 6y ago
    I checked his channel after your comment and it seems he's gone all-in on the satire recently. He does put out a really good video occasionally. To give you an idea of what he does that's missing in MOOCs, take a look at his video in which he migrates a database to a new server: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ry4EYnCgIwc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ry4EYnCgIwc Throughout the video he talks about why he chooses a particular method among the different approaches available, discusses their pros and cons, what are some of the issues you might encounter in the real world that you should consider. Even if the video is about migrating a database he goes through many other related topics like DNS, choosing the server hardware and OS. He also talks about his past experiences and observations throughout. It feels more engaging and you feel like an apprentice rather than a passive consumer.
master_yoda_1 6y ago
I agree we have thousand of very basic machine learning moocs now a days. people are wasting lots of time on them.
andrekandre 6y ago
> Watching lecture videos isn’t learning—it’s passive consumption. this x1000 watching something is more akin to entertainment, even if the contents are educational videos are great for piquing interest and keeping motivation going, but the real learning is in the doing (which is hard and takes time)... there is no way around it
AzzieElbab 6y ago
IMHO there are not enough advanced courses online and way too many beginner ones
denver111797 6y ago
Depends on your learning style. Simple, free online tutorials followed by years on the job practice with real data is what got me into Data Science/ML from scratch, ultimately running a ML team at a unicorn. After reading thousands of Data Science/ML resumes and doing a lot of hiring, I find too many MOOCs to be a negative. They may be good for learning, but padding them on a resume isn't particularly valuable.

194 points by 7d7n 6y ago

As a noob, I feel this. The weird thing is that I am very well aware that tutorials only feel good because I see progress, but that progress is empty. I am aware that confronting a personal project really settles that knowledge in, but I still postpone personal projects whenever I think “I don’t really understand what this means, maybe I should just finish that online course and I’ll be ready”. Also fighting perfection over progress is tough. “This is not the best way of doing it” is constantly in my head when trying to do thing, which is mental space that could be used towards figuring out the next step. But I finally started, as stupid and useless as it may sound, I’m just making a counter in Java that stores that in a MySQL database. Why? Idk, I am learning how to connect my program to a DB, the quirks to learn from that, and then I plan on doing this from a browser. I also plan on trying SQLite because MySQL is overkill, and so just by doing this simple thing I learn a bunch of things going down the rabbit hole. Does anyone need an app with a button that just adds a number to a row? No, but the different aspects of getting that to run with no errors are what’s important to me.

theastrowolfe 6y ago
> Fighting perfection over progress is tough. I agree. The struggle is real when trying to learn the "right" way to do something. However, progress can still happen (even if it is in the "wrong" direction). I'm okay scrapping a feature or even an entire project when trying something new. I've learned how not to do something and, more importantly, the reason behind that.
deleted 6y ago
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dceddia 6y ago
Love it, I think that’s a great approach. Build a bunch of tiny “stupid” things of increasing complexity and before long you’ll step back and realize how much you’ve improved. I trying to instill this in folks as I teach React - rather than building some portfolio masterpiece out the gate, do a bunch of little fun things to build skills and confidence. The trouble with any of this stuff is that no course/book/tutorial can prepare you for every eventuality, and sooner or later you’re going to want to do a thing that nobody explicitly taught you, with a combination of tools that differs from any tutorial you can find. I think building up skills in the way you’re doing it is great preparation for that eventuality.
lamename 6y ago
You may be a self-described noob at whatever you're learning, but it's clear from your outlook that you've had substantial work or life experience to understand complexity as a general phenomenon (i.e. expecting unexpected errors, requiring depth of learning in yourself). Incremental custom projects is a good way to learn -- not everything has to be "useful for others", especially where learning and practice is concerned.
MauranKilom 6y ago
I find the most important thing when learning anything new is a "safe harbor" to explore from. That's why "Hello world!" is so fundamental. And that's why a counter stored into a database is one of the biggest steps you can make - you've wedged the door open and it can't possibly fall shut again. Everything else is incremental from there. And if something doesn't work, you know you can just go a step back and reassess, without starting from zero. Writing code is beautiful like that. I wish you many productive struggles and subsequent successes in your journey!

chrisaycock 6y ago

MOOCs are for introducing a new topic; they can't make you an expert in anything. I like the occasional (as in, literally once a year) MOOC to see something completely outside my specific profession. But the only way to get good within my profession is hands-on activity. It's similar to reading HN, or even ACM/IEEE articles. All of that stuff is for seeing new material, not for getting better at my bread and butter.

jonnycomputer 6y ago

For me the problem really is this: I want or need to do X, and to do that I need to know Y, which is a subset of knowledge domain Z, and I only really have time to learn Y. Sometimes I can get away with learning only Y, but most of the time not spending all that time learning Z means I've only thought I've learned Y, and as soon as something doesn't work as expected, I'm stuck. What I miss is what I (almost) had in college: the chance to learn in depth not tied to a particular instrumental outcome.

agumonkey 6y ago

I agree that MOOCs are very removed from the reality of building something. The unknown territory, the false starts, the unknown unknowns, gradual refinements, new requirements.. It's a whole different field in itself. Which is adult/pro life I guess. It also leads to a vastly different feeling, it's not knowing for the sake of knowing, it's know-how. It has social value. ps: this brings a question, is there a way to teach that knowledge beside jumping in the pool ?

mariodiana 6y ago

If you find a really good tutorial by programmers who are both excellent teachers and experienced in that particular field, it beats JIT learning on a personal project in one important respect. You get exposure to the One True Way of doing things. What do I mean? Years ago, I learned to program iOS from the Big Nerd Ranch book. The most important thing I got out of that was learning enough about the Cocoa-Touch framework that I didn't try to fight the framework. You don't get that from JIT learning. How could you? That said, at the end of the book the authors urged the reader to go and write programs — that that was the only way to learn, after mastering the fundamentals. A beginner should place his or trust in an expert. The reason is that the big mistake beginners make, not knowing the fundamentals, is convincing themselves way too early that they have now grasped the fundamentals. I don't think the author and I are at odds. I agree a person can get too comfortable with MOOCs, YouTube courses, etc. But at the start, there is no substitute. And the start lasts longer than you may think.

julianlam 6y ago
> But at the start, there is no substitute. And the start lasts longer than you may think. Don't worry, he explicitly says this at the top. > Don’t get me wrong, I love MOOCs. They’re great for trying to learn a new programming language (e.g., Python, Scala) or framework (e.g., Spark, TensorFlow) or subject (e.g., statistics, machine learning). The structured learning environment, excellent teaching, and exercises (and solutions) guide us through the best way to learn new concepts. > >But most of the time, we don’t really need it. If we already know machine learning, taking that shiny new MOOC won’t help with applying it more effectively.
VBprogrammer 6y ago
As with so many things in life the best way probably doesn't live at either extreme. Often times I'll read about a subject and not fully understand it (and probably not even take the extra time to fully understand it) but when the problem comes up organically a light bulb goes off and I at least know what I'm googling for at that point.
krmmalik 6y ago
Continuing on with this train of thought, I agree with you. I'm not a programmer but I once had to learn how to use networking software for real world implementations, things like mailservers, firewalls etc etc. I did a fair bit of JIT but finally got hold of some courses for each piece of software. The bump in my knowledge and understanding was raised by a few orders of magnitude that almost 15 years later has still stuck with me. It's about funding the right expert as you say. The right person is invaluable.

Gys 6y ago

MOOC in case you were wondering like me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_open_online_course https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_open_online_course

elaus 6y ago
I wish articles would at least explain acronyms the first time they're mentioned. Just putting the full form in parenthesis would go a long way and not disturb readers that already know them. Maybe it's because I'm not a native speaker, but I have never heard of MOOCs before – and I'm consuming a lot of content in English on a daily basis (e.g. on HN).
- uberswe 6y ago
  I'm a native speaker and I had never heard of it before either. From reading the title I thought this was about creating content and teaching others programming since MOC sometimes stands for My Own Creation.
- deleted 6y ago
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MauranKilom 6y ago
Plea for future article writers: It won't kill you to hyperlink the first occurrence of acronyms (especially titular ones) in the block text. Those ten seconds will not only save hundreds of readers time (even if they only mouse over the link to see the expansion in the Wikipedia page title). It will also prevent readers opening your article, seeing the same unexplained acronym mentioned every second sentence and deciding that a google search with an unknown amount of "figuring out which of all the results matches the article context" is not worth their time.
EL_Loco 6y ago
JIT in case you were wondering like me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-in-time_learning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-in-time_learning

Blackthorn 6y ago

TFA really only applies to basic new software topics. I'm doing a course in biochemistry right now. It's literally the recording of a course taught at OSU that the professor was extremely generous to make and post on YouTube (thank you, Dr. Ahern!). I'm not sure how I'd ever learn biochemistry without it, seeing as I'm not in college anymore.

tastyfreeze 6y ago
I buy college textbooks if a topic really piques my interest. A good textbook combined with free lectures is great way to learn.

jimmyswimmy 6y ago

It had never occurred to me to wait for a class to teach me something. Just go out and learn it! If there are no references (books, wiki, blog, training resources) it's great fun to go your own way and figure it out from scratch. Usually there are some shoulders to stand on and reading a quick paper is fine well spent, but in every niche area it's best not to spend too long searching for that paper. Just do. Learn along the way. I suppose in less niche areas it might be better to spend more time finding good tutorials, but even then, we learn much more when we do, not when we listen.

zanny 6y ago

I've picked up drawing in the last few years, probably because it occupies enough overlap with the centers of my brain I trained to code but also is outside the envelope enough to still feel like something different from my day job. Its basically the same thing there too. Honestly you need both structured learning and lived experience in both, and probably in most skills in life. If you don't have the structure you will meander aimlessly solving "problems" and "getting better" (at code or art) but never actually getting anywhere with it. If you only have the structure you will never be able to actually make anything truly new because you can't solve the novel problems in the trenches. Start something new with structure but rapidly push yourself to start using that regimented curriculum to make new stuff. And then when you enter a new problem domain (you learned Python and want to start doing networking or you know how to draw but want to paint) you switch back to a regimented curriculum to start till you get that 20% baseline knowledge to build off of again.

angarg12 6y ago

Many years ago I used to be very proactive about my learning. I read tons of books, did MOOCs, tutorials, learnt new tools and frameworks... What I found with time is that I forgot most of those. Except for the very basic and foundational concepts, anything that I haven't kept practicing is almost gone. I can't even remember most of the courses or books I've read. Even worse, in some cases I ended up actually using that cool tool that I learnt 3 years ago. Guess what, now it is 2 major versions ahead and most of what I knew is useless anyway. I love the reference to JIT learning in the article. This has been my primary way of learning for the past few years: wait until I'm facing a problem, and then put the effort to learn enough to solve it. I still do some background explorative learning, but JIT is much more efficient and effective.

robbyking 6y ago
> Anything that I haven't kept practicing is almost gone. I think that's true of any method of learning. I once took a class on a proprietary audio visual language, and a year of so later my manager asked me to write some control software using that language, and I basically had to start from scratch. On the other hand, I took Stanford's first MOOC Swift Class, and have been using Swift as my primary language ever since.
- parenthesis 6y ago
  I find the learning something again for the second (or nth) time is at least easier than it was the first time.
  - vxNsr 6y ago
    Very much this. I'll take MOOCS read an article and then feel like I forgot everything only to have a much easier time "learning" it the second time when it becomes practical.
elliekelly 6y ago
> anything that I haven't kept practicing is almost gone. I can't even remember most of the courses or books I've read. I don’t think this is unique to MOOCs. I think this is a fact of life.

gennarro 6y ago

Pretty serious title mismatch here.

deleted 6y ago

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ksm1717 6y ago

Everyone knows these are 90% for credential building vs skills, why are they desirable for hirers? I feel like it creates some self fulfilling prophecy of “these credentials are useful because other people have them”.

somerandomqaguy 6y ago
Easy to create keyword filters for when sifting though many resumes perhaps?

qntty 6y ago

Off topic, but I find it very off-putting when people write blog posts using "we". Like speak for yourself, I have my own reasons for doing things. It's to the point where I don't even pay attention to what the person is saying because they're being so presumptive in telling me what I think. Which is weird, because I really enjoy the convention of using we in math.

kylebenzle 6y ago
Maybe the former seems pushy while the latter is inclusive. Math is about discovery and we are all in the same boat. A marketer saying "we are all in this together" feels manipulative.
fantod 6y ago
After years in academia, it's incredible how much conscious effort I have to put into writing (or giving a talk) without using "we".

mandeepj 6y ago

We should ban these personal rant posts like 1. Stop doing ** 2. Why I don't like ** 3. You should not ** It's your personal thing. Don't like certain thing - try to do it your own way. Can't do it then change your attitude.

CivBase 6y ago
I like learning about other people's opinions, even if they're just opinions. They help me refine my own. Besides, not everyone has the ability to "do it your own way". Sharing opinions like this can be a good way to determine if there's value in an idea and maybe even get help if needed.
sterlinm 6y ago
I think you need to make the case for banning them with a series of articles: 1. Stop Posting Rants on Hacker News 2. Why I Don't Like People Writing About Disliking Things 3. You Should Not Tell People Not To Do Things
rnd0 6y ago
"Stop posting stories I don't like!" /s Seriously though? It's useful to see people's perspective and the discussion around them (and personally speaking, I come to HN for the discussion) is useful and insightful -often more so than the original article. Click-baity titles are annoying, though. I'll grant you that...

minimaxir 6y ago

I wrote a similar article 2 years ago (https://minimaxir.com/2018/10/data-science-protips/ https://minimaxir.com/2018/10/data-science-protips/) arguing against MOOCs for learning data science/machine learning skills, as they are not reflective of real world applications. I'm all for personal projects especially in DS/ML (it's how I started my career in the field), but the unfortunate reality is that there's really no way nowadays to learn the hard/boring parts of DS/ML without already having a DS/ML job. Any attempts at an analogous MOOC/YouTube would likely not be very popular. That said, the DS/ML job market 2 years later is even more competitive, and niche personal projects on your resume are no longer enough. Even after working as a data scientist for 3 years, I'm not confident I could get another DS/ML job.

kylebenzle 6y ago
How horribly disappointing. I'm at the tail end of a 6 month, $17,000 online DS bootcamp. I've got some great projects and learned a ton but yeh, they seem to be slowly preparing to let us down. They keep saying how hard it will be to find a job and may take months. LOL, I'm screwed.
- nefitty 6y ago
  The frame of mind that kept me going was focusing on my effort, instead of an outcome. I visualized my effort by tracking job applications. I applied to a lot, so at the end of the day, that metric is what made me feel successful at the end of the day, not necessarily whether some inundated recruiter emailed me back.
- deleted 6y ago
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- superbcarrot 6y ago
  It's down to the market. There aren't that many beginner or mid-level jobs in the field and there is a big oversupply of candidates. I wouldn't recommend data science or machine learning to people who are changing career direction or need to invest a lot of time/money/effort to catch up with all the theory. Not that it's impossible, just very hard. It's also getting more and more gatekept over time with increasing requirements for advanced degrees.

drivingmenuts 6y ago

I can usually spend more time and effort coming up with something worth the time and effort than actually taking a course.

zhte415 6y ago

Stop doing click-bait titles.

yonif 6y ago

This post seems to be addressing a specific phenomena and I tend to agree. I don't see the point in doing more than 1-2 introduction-level courses. I'll take this chance to recommend 2 phenomenal free MOOCs: 1. Nand2Tetris[1] which really nails giving the realization (of not understanding just HOW MUCH) complexity there is in the layers upon layers of abstractions programmers use. 2. An introduction to Logic[2] via programming course (by one of the authors of the previous MOOC, Noam Nissan), which introduces logic (an overview that ultimately ends with Godel's completeness/incompleteness) in a relatively (to the rigorous math) approachable manner. The one caveat is the book is still a work in progress, and it has many parts that are not well written. [1]: https://www.nand2tetris.org/ https://www.nand2tetris.org/ [2]: https://www.logicthrupython.org/ https://www.logicthrupython.org/

NickM 6y ago

Maybe this is true for some topics. Yeah, a lot of times you can pick up a new programming language by playing around with it. I don't think most people will have much luck learning say, advanced mathematics by just futzing around and skimming Wikipedia though. Even topics like ML (an example referenced by the original post) benefit greatly from an understanding of theory and fundamentals. Yeah maybe any random dev can hack together a model by downloading scikit-learn and throwing data at it, but you'll probably get much better results if you take the time to learn about concepts like cross-validation, overfitting, etc. The "just do stuff" attitude has its merits, but there's also something to be said for working from first principles and learning some theory to back up your applied skills.

compscistd 6y ago

I think MOOCs are great for the thing you've been sorta kinda interested in but didn't know where to start. Around the 0%-20% background-info ballpark. For me, my most successful MOOCs have been: - CS50 at they very beginning of my career ~2015 that brought me to the fundamentals of CS and all that it can do in a very fun way. - Jazz Appreciation from UTAustin (https://www.edx.org/course/jazz-appreciation-3 https://www.edx.org/course/jazz-appreciation-3). I lived near a Jazz club and I often heard snippets of performances while walking by, but I felt like I needed a music background to really appreciate what I was hearing. I randomly spotted this course and I learned which eras of Jazz I like best, common themes in music, common instrument combinations, and the final project encouraged me to go listen to Jazz myself. It's become a fun part of my life in a way that a short YouTube intro or just walking into the club wouldn't have been able to inspire. Part of that was likely the predefined path it offered and Jeffrey Helmer's enthusiasm for teaching the course. Ultimately, MOOCs can very well be a way to procrastinate on a professional or personal level from just diving into the thing you already have the basics for. But it can just as easily be a way to open you up to something you never thought was in your wheelhouse in a structured path. Blog posts, documentation, and most YouTube videos are too static to serve an absolute beginner that needs questions answered early, consistently, and frequently.

lsalvatore 6y ago

This is as ridiculous as saying "Stop watching videos". Everyone's online courses and video content is completely different and unique to their level of experience. Most online courses hold your hand through building a project: that's a good thing, for those who want that content.

wayeq 6y ago

Just knowing the basics and then diving into tinkering risks wasting a lot of your time making mistakes that other people have already made and learned from. If the point of the article is "don't do online course at the exclusion of everything else", that is just common sense.

MauranKilom 6y ago

> "Doing that MOOC/Masters gives me a certificate that helps my resume." I have to mirror an observation I've read on here that matches my retrospective view: Job applicants with multiple online course certificates tend to do poorly in technical interviews. <tangent> This may in part be a failing of our education systems. "Be taught about something -> write test -> pass/no pass" is usually all there is, and this system of how knowledge is valued becomes ingrained in students. Sure, tests usually contain sections of "applying" the knowledge, but ultimately it's still studying to and because of the test. If you're lucky enough to be both versed in a subject and visit a school that provides extra-curricular engagement on these subjects, you may get a glimpse of what it feels like to solve a challenge because you want to. Otherwise you have do that completely separately from whatever formal education you receive. It has personally taken me many years and several key experiences outside of school to fully grok that presentations aren't just condensing a topic you don't care about into a scheme somebody else dictates, held in front of an audience that would rather be elsewhere. Or that playing music isn't just about getting the notes and their volumes right. But now I deeply enjoy both. I would imagine that many are similarly stuck with a terrible mindset regarding learning or problem solving due to the way they were educated, even if they would find it exhilarating with the right frame of mind. </tangent> So yeah, show off your self-directed projects in your resume. Thrill your interviewers with the cool problems you tackled. Mention key challenges you overcame. Without exaggerating too much, I would say online course certificates are as indicative of your technical abilities as a screenshot of a completed Tensorflow download. And that extends to the message you send if you include them in your application.

vxNsr 6y ago
This is interesting in that you're advocating for a lot more CE than many other fields require or look for. More and more it's becoming apparent that CS needs a standards body and a more structured learning process. As many people feel that no matter how much extra time they put in it's not enough.

utdiscant 6y ago

This is basically the reason we are building Eduflow (www.eduflow.com), a learning management system for active learning. Some things can and should be learned by a series of videos, but if you want to learn a real skill deeply, then you need to engage with the material in some way.

compacct27 6y ago

Anyone who's professionally coding right now has one super-effective option that's rarely talked about: Hire someone knowledgeable to walk you through what you're learning. I've been doing a heavy C++ project, and as a web developer, I was basically a walking footgun. I realized this early on, hired a total expert in the field (the guy has contributed to C++ standards committees before), and am Loving how smoothly this project is going thanks to learning from him. It's incredibly fun. I pay the guy $150/hr in 10 hour chunks and get the most in-depth insight into what I'm doing, how to revise my code, what the code means in the first place, etc. It's perfect if you know how to code but find yourself in a brand new domain. I still learn outside of our hour-long mentor sessions, of course. Skip the MOOC, hire the teacher. ..and then also do the MOOC, honestly they're pretty great.

UncleOxidant 6y ago
> $150/hr in 10 hour chunks and get the most in-depth insight into what I'm doing Yeah, it's... an option, I guess, if you've got the dough. Many of us don't have that kind of budget so we look for some of those experts who have blogs and youtube channels.
- compacct27 6y ago
  That's totally fair, this guy is on the higher end and this is the only project I'd be willing to pay that for. You can find one for less, though, if you ever find yourself wanting one. Mentor.io is a good place for it.
- commandlinefan 6y ago
  I'm trying to figure out what I know well enough to charge $150/hour to teach people now...
  - pvarangot 6y ago
    I've charged that rate and it's usually veeeery niche knowledge that somehow seems to combine more than 10 years of experience. Like I worked in information security and aerospace and am a C/C++ coder and someone is thinking about a software product that's a C++ library for securely communicating with satellites. I'm usually contacted by engineers or companies that do market surveys and have the detailed knowledge of my background, so doing a lot of those (which are usually also compensated at like 40 to 60 per hour) pays off. I haven't been able to engage in any of these for two years now because I moved to the US on an H1B visa, but the offers still keep on coming. I got like five in 2019 and two in 2020 and I had to say no.

afterwalk 6y ago

I personally alternate between taking courses and doing projects. Doing all MOOC is bad for some of the reasons the articles covered. But doing all projects is also sub-optimal because sometimes it is hard to know what you don't know. Balancing theory and practice works the best for me.

osoba 6y ago

Tbh any MOOC that "needs only 2-4 hours a week" is, by design, an entry level course and taking more of those won't help you progress. On the other hand, you shouldn't lump together and dismiss all MOOCs as there are plenty of more advanced ones that will definitely make a difference. For example, 90% of MIT classes such as Intro to Statistics https://www.edx.org/course/fundamentals-of-statistics https://www.edx.org/course/fundamentals-of-statistics or CMU Deep Learning http://deeplearning.cs.cmu.edu/ http://deeplearning.cs.cmu.edu/

commandlinefan 6y ago

> You just need to know enough to start; the rest you’ll pick up along the way. Hmmm... I guess that's technically true (and eventually you do need to start), but I've seen a lot of people continue to code in very inefficient ways because they actually don't know that a better way even exists. If you're not starting because you're not done learning, you're probably not doing it right, but if you're done learning because you've started, you're also not doing it right.

jamses 6y ago

I found early-on that MOOCs were terrible for learning because of the barriers they put up. Locked-in time schedules, a trend towards very short "bitty" and simplistic videos that don't tend to offer any direction when they're done. Youtube lectures on the other hand have been immensely valuable, especially if you can find a relevant (university) reading list and/or problem sets if they're applicable. All you really need as a self-learner is someone to say "head in this direction". After that I agree with op that finding something fun to do is the best way to learn. On an aside, as a text highlighter (I highlight the text I'm reading), the javascript "tweet this" pop-up on this site is horrific.

duxup 6y ago

As someone who was largely self taught in the past 3 years, my biggest frustration with learning on the go online has been the flexibility of the code / lack of contest with free online resources. Yeah if I google how to build a widget to add to an application, I can find that. However, the widget is often so tightly coded that it couldn't ever be useful, it doesn't fit a given pattern or concept... it's JUST that widget. A widget that just adds +1 to a thing (an admittedly contrived example) might do the job for what I googled, but oh so often it is inflexible and doesn't really teach me much about WHY it was coded the way it did... it just produced an outcome that I googled.

nickjj 6y ago

I can't speak for how other folks run courses but to me the value of a course is a combination of having well tested code to use and access to full time support. If you bought a course on how to develop X with Y web framework and the course comes with lots of well written code, high test coverage and was extracted out of multiple real world projects that's basically buying a time machine because it might take you 6+ months to write the same code from scratch and you won't have the insights gathered from years of practical experience. Or even worse you might never get started because you get trapped by information paralysis. I know a few people who have taken my https://buildasaasappwithflask.com/ https://buildasaasappwithflask.com/ course and built very successful businesses in less than a year. One of them is making $90,000 / month and initially spent like 4 months customizing the code from the course to do what his service needed to do. Note: The TL;DR on the above course is it's not a course on how to find a SAAS app idea. It's focused on how to build the SAAS app itself using Flask, Docker, Stripe, etc..

__mharrison__ 6y ago

(Disclaimer: I make my living teaching) Author is correct, most don't complete MOOC's (for various reasons). However a good teacher is like a coach and will grease the skids for learning. My experience teaching Python and Data Science at some of the biggest companies in the world is that you can be a professional and still have knowledge gaps. You don't know what you don't know. Once you fill in those gaps it can open many doors. I elaborate a bit on my blog: https://www.metasnake.com/blog/learn-python-2021.html https://www.metasnake.com/blog/learn-python-2021.html

omarhaneef 6y ago

What you can pick up from a video is a workflow you may not have though of. For example, I don't think beginners have the unix console open logged into the database, while they have another window with the back end code, and then the developer tools open at the same time so they can debug the flow "end to end" unless they are taught to do so. Sometime they may not think to think: why isn't the data appearing? did that data even get read into the database? Do I have to open the dbase now to see? 5 minutes of watching someone do it can save you years of learning that workflow.

dinglefairy 6y ago

hrrmm, any suggestions on personal projects that will make mill-i-ons? I'm half serious. like how can i make an algorithm that auto trades vwap starting with a $1000 account? anyone have links for projects in; building your own receiver. building a laser. building a 4 story walk up multi family unit. building a particle accelerator programming a kernel from scratch how to get a super hot mail order Russian bride for free how to convert your car to hydrogen cell how to create your own cannabis genetics i threw some in there to see if you're paying attention, but maybe there should be a thread for cool projects [not just github like].

christiansakai 6y ago

I keep seeing some of my LinkedIn social circles people posting their "Just finished <insert X> course". It is delusional. They hope to get noticed by people thus offer them a job? Sometimes I just out of curiosity go into their profile to see, and true enough, all of them are unemployed and have too much bs on their LinkedIn.

tropicalrun 6y ago

I'm curious what people here think about building projects in remote teams as a strategy for learning software developer skills? Could also apply to other related roles like UX/UI designers, product owners, etc. Specifically, after a certain base skill level has been reached. Also, these teams would include deadlines, navigating git/github, time management, communicating with others, etc. Full-disclosure: I'm a part of a community / startup that organizes such teams for learners. I don't want to be spammy so will refrain from saying the name. It actually grew out of a MOOC forum to help with some of the issues mentioned in OP's article. It ran for about 3 years free as a time-intensive side project, but switched to paid to reduce another common MOOC issue (ghosting).

calebkaiser 6y ago

In my personal experience, this isn't a question of either/or, it's a question of order. That is, courses are fantastic, but most of the time, they're more beneficial after you've done some JIT learning. Fastai, who in my opinion create the best educational resources in the deep learning space, are a great example of this. They use a metaphor involving sports to explain their approach. You don't learn to play a sport by pouring over rulebooks and studying professionals—you start playing. However, as you get a feel for the sport, you then find yourself in a position where learning a lot more about the theory of the game would make a huge difference to you, and that's where courses come in. Similarly, they get you off the ground quickly with some basic intuitions around deep learning, give you a sandbox to do some JIT learning, and then begin layering in deeper concepts. I've had similar experiences in my life, where taking graduate level courses was incredibly rewarding specifically in areas where I'd already spent a decent amount of time doing JIT learning—and arguably, where I'd reached a relative limit in how far JIT would take me.

dimmke 6y ago

I love the concept of "Just-in-time learning". I think it applies to other things too. In my personal life is when I am working on a large scope project, I tend to try to anticipate every single thing that I will have to do up front. But I've found I always miss something or misunderstand a requirement. It's way more efficient to just do things as they come up, and I'm trying to switch to that method more often. I definitely relate to taking some kind of programming related course and they teach you about something you will never use, that people rarely use in real world scenarios, but there's still a pressure to make sure I fully understand it.

someday_somehow 6y ago

I spent over a 100 hours working through MOOCs and video tutorials over the past month only to find out that all I would learn at the end would be the basics that wouldn't really be help if someone asked me to 'go build'. I'd have the same feeling even after completing an advanced level course. What we need are technical MOOCs that discuss what decisions to make when approaching a problem, evaluating trade-offs, what are the common practices you'd come across in a production environment and where the concept you learned fits in the big picture. I haven't found any MOOC that talks about the above in depth for web dev and the only youtuber I found who talks about this is TechLead but he mostly puts out 10 minute clips instead of complete tutorials. I've gone back to books and I'm learning much more per time spent studying something.

spitfire 6y ago
I thought tech lead was a satire (as a millionaire). Practical application is an area I've always thought was sorely lacking. There's lots of places to learn the theory, but I still don't get it until I understand the applications. Then I start to get a fingertip feel (Fingerspitzengefuhl if you want to come from a certain view). Whenever I see "Application is left as an exercise for the reader", I read that as "I don't actually understand the subject well enough to teach it fully".
- someday_somehow 6y ago
  I checked his channel after your comment and it seems he's gone all-in on the satire recently. He does put out a really good video occasionally. To give you an idea of what he does that's missing in MOOCs, take a look at his video in which he migrates a database to a new server: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ry4EYnCgIwc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ry4EYnCgIwc Throughout the video he talks about why he chooses a particular method among the different approaches available, discusses their pros and cons, what are some of the issues you might encounter in the real world that you should consider. Even if the video is about migrating a database he goes through many other related topics like DNS, choosing the server hardware and OS. He also talks about his past experiences and observations throughout. It feels more engaging and you feel like an apprentice rather than a passive consumer.

master_yoda_1 6y ago

I agree we have thousand of very basic machine learning moocs now a days. people are wasting lots of time on them.

andrekandre 6y ago

> Watching lecture videos isn’t learning—it’s passive consumption. this x1000 watching something is more akin to entertainment, even if the contents are educational videos are great for piquing interest and keeping motivation going, but the real learning is in the doing (which is hard and takes time)... there is no way around it

AzzieElbab 6y ago

IMHO there are not enough advanced courses online and way too many beginner ones

denver111797 6y ago

Depends on your learning style. Simple, free online tutorials followed by years on the job practice with real data is what got me into Data Science/ML from scratch, ultimately running a ML team at a unicorn. After reading thousands of Data Science/ML resumes and doing a lot of hiring, I find too many MOOCs to be a negative. They may be good for learning, but padding them on a resume isn't particularly valuable.