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Hacker CS: The Khan Academy of Computer Science.
- agilo 15y agoThat's a sample of the videos: http://www.youtube.com/Agilowen http://www.youtube.com/Agilowen
- patrickaljord 15y agoPlease license them as CC SA or similar.
- blendergasket 15y agoThis is extremely exciting to me! I've worked in a couple programming classes but am mainly self taught (and no where near as good as I want to be) so I'm really excited to go through these! Thank you!
- jvandenbroeck 15y agoI quickly skipped through the video & it looks nice:) although I don't like the sound of the voice
- agilo 15y agoThanks! That would be my voice btw :) But I'm looking for more people to help out in producing the content. It's a one man thing so far.
- younata 15y agoAs I'm sure just about everyone here would tell you, we'd be more than happy to help you.
- kmfrk 15y agoThe voice seems fine, but the audio is awful. I am slightly hard of hearing, and trying to listen to what is actually being said would take away from the point of the lectures. Maybe they can be salvaged with some post-processing where the voice is bumped up.
- agilo 15y agoI'll keep that in mind. Given the interest, I'll make sure to get myself a professional grade microphone for future videos :)
- kmfrk 15y agoAre you using a regular microphone? I would imagine that a decent one would do the job, but your current one makes it sound that you are shouting from the bathroom or something. :) I think a cheap headset would do just fine. Sal Khan doesn't use anything expensive.
- agilo 15y agoI don't hold the microphone to my mouth, but simply put it on my desk. That's to prevent it from picking up my "pops". I need to start using a pop filter.
- nrbafna 15y agonit-picky but "sign up to be notified" text, looks like a text-input field. changing the box-shadow to outside will help.
- rreeves 15y agoGreat idea! I'm looking forward to your launch.
- tathagatadg 15y agoAwesome ... no more school!
- JacobIrwin 15y agoLooking forward to seeing this tool launch! May take a bit before it has all the resources that can currently be found in the YouTube tutorials, but I can see it getting there in a short time... This guy has a full range (and a good rep) of CS tutorials: http://www.thenewboston.com/ http://www.thenewboston.com/. Maybe you could contact him and collab. Keep us posted :-)
- agilo 15y agoThanks! Will do. His focus seems more on practical matters (software development) than theoretical aspects, but I sure have a lot to learn from him.
- todayiamme 15y agoOkay, dumb question, which languages will you teach the concepts through? Does the list by any chance include a lisp dialect?
- JacobIrwin 15y agoIf the app is going to built similar to Khan, my guess is there will be videos (with progressions) for several languages and dialects. I have no inside info - and stand to be corrected - but Khan offers a wide web (not as in interwebs) of sub-categories that branch out to a sizable spectrum, so I am guessing hackercs.com will too (within the field of 'CS').
- Thoreandan 15y agoUnfortunately the signup logic considers a "+" in an email address field to be an invalid email address.
- agilo 15y agoThat's embarrassing :$ I guess that's what happens when you take ready-made templates from themeforest ;) I'll see if I can fix that... Thanks for pointing it out though.
- Thoreandan 15y agoThanks! :)
- audioHack 15y agoI encountered that problem too, came all the way here, signed in, and look somebody beat me to the punch :-) We've all been there. +1 for ThemeForest. Non-design oriented programmer's best friend :D
- JeremyBanks 15y agoOddly, it doesn't mind top-level domains or names containing any of: !'"$^*= It does care about: +#%() Seems pretty arbitrary.
- patrickaljord 15y agoWill it be under a Creative Commons license like the Khan Academy? That would make a lot more people want to contribute.
- agilo 15y agoMaking those videos is just a passion I have. Not particularly looking to make money out of it, so I'm definitely going to explore that option.
- patrickaljord 15y agoGreat, youtube has an option for licensing videos with CC now.
- rmc 15y agoYou can still make money with CC.
- jules 15y agoI sure hope that the videos are not based on the same computer generated speech.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- virtica 15y agoIts a great idea. Ready for the movement from idea to implementation.
- krashidov 15y agoI'm in school for CS right now, so I'll be sure to complement with these videos as well. Thanks!
- agilo 15y agoYou don't have an email listed on your profile. Please get in touch (or let us know of your email). Thanks!
- dolvlo 15y agoXtranormal. Really? Can't take this seriously, I laugh so hard at TTS
- nwhitehead 15y agoSounds cool! I'm excited to see how it works out. Some notes from the video I saw on YouTube. Needs better audio quality. Bigger fonts for the computer typing would be nicer, the existing size was just legible. It would be nice to see the diagram and code on screen at the same time rather than switching back and forth. I liked the 5 minute length, that is just long enough.
- agilo 15y agoPoor audio quality noted. I'll be getting myself a better microphone. That particular video (with the computer typing) is in HD and can go up to 720p. But it's very easy to increase the font in notepad++, and I'll be doing that. As to switching back and forth, the diagrams, notes and code will be available for download and so users will be able to follow along on their computers (and maybe even directly from the web app). Thanks for the feedback!
- scottjad 15y agoalready done. http://codeschool.org/core-units/ http://codeschool.org/core-units/ or http://www.youtube.com/user/briantwill http://www.youtube.com/user/briantwill
- covercash 15y agoAnother good resource: http://www.reddit.com/r/carlhprogramming/comments/9nz5s/welcome_everyone_some_details/ http://www.reddit.com/r/carlhprogramming/comments/9nz5s/welc...
- jimbokun 15y agoI never realized before how well a Reddit style conversation could work as a lecture format. Very short "lecture" part, then lots of comments with people trying different things, asking questions, and getting answers both from their peers and the "lecturer". Very simple, but very effective.
- gnuvince 15y agoThat's programming. I'm hoping these CS videos are more about data structures, algorithms, theory of computation, introduction to machine learning, language compilation, etc.
- pbreit 15y agoI don't find either of these to be very similar to Khan. My favorite things about Khan are the lengths and speed. But "already done" comments are usually incorrect and short-sighted.
- hng 15y agoYou can find some good lectures on the ArsDigital University Archive http://www.aduni.org/courses/ http://www.aduni.org/courses/ I liked the Theory of Computation lecture.
- jc-denton 15y agoSame here, used that lecture when my prof failed to explain the pumping lemma properly.
- Brewer 15y agoI'm a huge fan of Khan Academy, so I hope that your site will do the name justice. Now I can't imagine that Khan would have a problem, but you should be careful when relating your site with others like this. Some people might think that you're actually aligned with Khan Academy.
- agilo 15y agoYou are right. I've come to realize that the reason the site has garnered the attention it has thus far is mainly due to the comparison to Khan Academy. Otherwise, such services already exist (although one could argue that their execution leaves something to be desired). The only reason I used Khan Academy in the slogan was to get the idea closer to mind (and to do it with as few words as possible). But the effect has been far more powerful than anticipated. I'm really wondering now if I should remove any allusion to Khan Academy from the page. What do you think?
- agilo 15y agoAdded a disclaimer about the non-affiliation.
- Brewer 15y agoTHIS IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE I would recommend you give Khan a shout (if you can find an email or phone number for him) and see what he thinks. It's always possible that he might (at some point, not necessarily now) be interested in adding a CS section to Khan Academy. I'll admit that you're right, the reason I click on the link was because of the comparison to Khan Academy.
- rhizome31 15y ago<aol>I second this.</aol> Khan Academy already has sections on finance, history, etc. why not CS? That way you could stand on the shoulders of the infrastructure and focus on you content.
- Brewer 15y agoHere you go: http://www.khanacademy.org/about/the-team http://www.khanacademy.org/about/the-team There is an email address for 'Feature Requests'.
- Locke1689 15y agoWhat's the targeted difficulty level here? My experience with other Khan Academy videos is that they may be fine for a sophomore or junior year high schooler but their advanced topics are very lacking or generalized. How much CS will actually be taught here? How will it compete with things like Google Code University? http://code.google.com/edu/algorithms/index.html http://code.google.com/edu/algorithms/index.html
- agilo 15y agoI'd say undergraduate university education in CS. Most students in fact are only exposed to CS in college, so it'd be the basics they get there. A good review for seniors, an excellent introduction for students from high school, and a quick refresher for programming interviewee candidates.
- killerswan 15y agoWell, many of the high school kids in the world are getting less than nothing about CS in school: anything is good.
- schiptsov 15y agoWhat is remarkable about Khan Academy is that it was done. It was a huge effort. And it was done from scratch, out of nothing. Not in order to promote some crapware like Silverlight or Flash, but with commitment to teach poor people. Collecting videos around the net and put it in one page is useless idea. There are plenty of really great courses from MIT, Yale, Berkeley and they were already aggregated on sites like academicearch. And of course, no one could ever beat 6.001 from MIT ^_^ It is art. Btw, if you like to improve your education in CS courses from MIT are enough. For general education visit Yale. For everything else there is Berkeley. CS69A is a masterpiece.
- jhchen 15y agoDon't forget Stanford: http://see.stanford.edu/see/courses.aspx http://see.stanford.edu/see/courses.aspx. Their intro to programming courses are some of the best.
- jackowayed 15y agoI wish they had the new 107 on there. It's a very different course now (all C and assembly). Unfortunately the Stanford Center for Professional Development does most of the video taping now and is very resistive to putting videos online because they make something like $1k from people who pay just to watch the videos and $5k from people who are officially enrolled and get exams and assignments and such. Luckily, there are some newer recordings at http://openclassroom.stanford.edu/MainFolder/HomePage.php http://openclassroom.stanford.edu/MainFolder/HomePage.php I hear 161 (Algorithms) is a great class. 229 (Machine Learning) is supposed to be pretty good too.
- JacobIrwin 15y agoI started with MIT's [Open Courseware] Intro to Programming... got me very interested in learning more about CS.
- Brewer 15y agoHarvard's CS50 is a good course too.
- ISeemToBeAVerb 15y agoAs one commenter brought up, I think you need to keep in mind who you are targeting. The real brilliance about Khan Academy, in my mind, is that they aren't just another video tutorial repository. They have a sophisticated back-end tracking system that allows teachers and parents to gauge the level of comprehension the students are working at. The other thing to note about Khan, is that the site is precisely intended for younger students in an effort to give them a solid foundational backing for further study. Personally, I don't think we need another resource for experienced developers. Experienced developers have a level of understanding that already allows them to be more critical of the tools and resources they choose. If you're truly interested in following the Khan model, you should be focusing on the core fundamentals that are often taken for granted in many of the other resources. That's not to say that you couldn't expand to more advanced topics, but starting at the lowest level and working up would be more beneficial in my eyes. Anyhow, interested to see what you get up there. Cheers!
- newcomment 15y agoAnybody else find the video creepy? Watching this seems reassuring that the uncanny valley is very very very far away. :)
- Killah911 15y agoCome on, you guys could've at least not done the robot voices on the intro video. A blackboard with some emotinoal statments regarding pointers or even a "reflection" joke would've been more like it. It'd be a neat idea and I'd follow up only if you promise that robotic kittens will not be involved in any of the lectures :-P
- agilo 15y agoRest assured that no "robotic kittens" are involved in the production of the tutorials. That promo video was my form of working on a limited monetary, manpower and time budget. When you're still a student and the only one working on a project (and more interested in creating the videos than promoting them), you get something of this kind. That said, the interface and video seem to have been appealing enough for people to sign up en-mass (and for you to call us "you guyS" where in reality it should have been merely "you" ;) )
- pbreit 15y agoHopefully this will answer my Quora question: http://www.quora.com/Is-there-anything-like-Khan-Academy-but-for-programming http://www.quora.com/Is-there-anything-like-Khan-Academy-but...
- antihero 15y agohttp://files.0xf.nl/images/Screenshot-Hacker%20CS%20is%20the%20Khan%20Academy%20of%20computer%20science.%20-%20Google%20Chrome.png http://files.0xf.nl/images/Screenshot-Hacker%20CS%20is%20the... I'd sort that font out. But wicked idea :)
- fredoliveira 15y agoOh, font aliasing in chrome Linux. So much could/should be said.
- antihero 15y agoFor most things it's pretty damn nice.
- alatkins 15y agoThe typical "hacker" ethos these days (out with the old, re-invent the wheel, everything taught in college is a waste of time etc) seems to be almost the antithesis of classical computer science, so I'm not sure I get the juxtaposition of the two in the name of the site.
- paufernandez 15y agoNow I feel I have to say it: I've started a YouTube Channel inspired by the Khan Academy (in spanish). It's not like Hacker CS, though. I'm targetting only guys who want to program and don't know how to start, not future CS students. In my opinion, that is closer in spirit to the Khan Academy. I have only C++ right now but there are already 136 videos (and 227 subscribers). And I've gotten some very nice comments, and that makes me very happy. Here it is: http://www.youtube.com/user/paueky http://www.youtube.com/user/paueky There is a companion site, which shows the dependency graph between videos: http://minidosis.org/C++ http://minidosis.org/C++
- chrisjsmith 15y agochoke SICP. And it works in bright sunlight and doesn't require batteries. On a more serious note, Khan Academy is great but the format allows too many distractions. I'd like to see a paper version of it.
- duncanj 15y agoStarting with a quick discussion of NIH syndrome.
- lhnz 15y agoI've put my email down. Hopefully this is more about the fundamentals and theory of Computer Science, since there is a lot elsewhere online if you want to learn how to program. Somebody else mentioned the format, and I would request that the videos are short and concise. It would also be nice if there were audiobook versions since I could listen to this on the way to and from work, although then you would have to make sure the visual part does not contain information that's not audible.
- makthrow 15y agoI'm sorry but you are not the "Khan Academy of CS" until you actually have a product. There is nothing on the site yet. It's an idea, a concept, a theory. I don't like this trend of launching while you haven't developed anything.
- tanay46 15y agoA great idea. Will you be making your own lectures or linking to the lectures from MIT OCW, Stanford etc.
- buckwild 15y agoThis sounds awesome. Can't wait.