13 ms·

The No Excuse List: The Best Place On The Web To Learn Anything

378 points by joelrunyon 14y ago

bezaorj 14y ago
Cool site, simple and with great links
saint-loup 14y ago
This is great, and I like the "no excuse" angle, but the list is a little overwhelming. The problem of self-learning today is not to find ressources, it's to find a good one and stick to it until you mastered the subject. If there are several good ones, just pick one of them. On this subject, see The Paradox of choice[1] and Buridan's donkey[2]. Sidenote: For me, "Windows 7, OneNote + more for students" and Dreamspark go to the same link. [1] http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6127548813950043200 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6127548813950043200 [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buridan%27s_ass http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buridan%27s_ass
- countessa 14y ago
  Agreed. What I find is usually missing from a lot of lists of "learning" online is a time-proven track through a subject to take you from beginner to expert.
- jschuur 14y ago
  I think the problem with self learning is making the information digestable enough and regular gratification to the user about the things they've just learned (challenges that gradually increase in difficulty). Highlight which of the sites offer that (with icons?) and it would help user pick the right sites based on their patience level e.g..
  - joelrunyon 14y ago
    I think the finality of learning "courses" of traditional education has something to it. There's something to be said for having a task at hand and accomplishing a series of steps rather that lead to something rather than a mashup of useful tutorials and lectures (no-matter how brilliant they are), that don't have an underlying current, theme or curriculum to them.
    - lix2333 14y ago
      This is actually something I was thinking about. For instance, say someone wants to learn Ruby. They could go to noexcuselist and find a step-by-step process that someone has made using only free resources. Does that sound like something that would be useful? The hard part is, I'd have to expand the site and make it social, so people can post their own guides. I definitely don't have the technical expertise for that.
      - hv23 14y ago
        I built a basic version of a site that does just that called Polymath - http://beta.whatispolymath.com http://beta.whatispolymath.com (here's a sample course on Ruby, for example - http://beta.whatispolymath.com/courses/12/ruby-on-rails-for-beginners/ http://beta.whatispolymath.com/courses/12/ruby-on-rails-for-...). No longer working on it, but email me if you want to chat more.
- joelrunyon 14y ago
  I thought it could have actually been built out a bit more. If they created a few more categories (and sub-categories), they could really have something very cool on their hands.
  - rodolphoarruda 14y ago
    I've got the same feeling. I'd add categories for education level, accreditation and course length. Having a "starting soon" section would also be fine, listing the courses starting between now and the next two weeks.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- aoprisan 14y ago
  brings us back to the days of web directories
- lix2333 14y ago
  I agree with you on 'picking one' and sticking to it. Maybe I should highlight one source for each that I strongly recommend or something? Also, thanks for the heads up about the Dreamspark link. Looks like windows recently redirected it to the same site. You used to be able to download Windows 7 and other resources for free as a student...
- americandesi333 14y ago
  I would be curious to know what you think of our self learning site called LearningJar.com, where we are helping people figure out the best resources to learn skills and follow their progress.
hrydgard 14y ago
Some good links, but something like this really needs search and filtering, and some sort of category overview - as it is, on most monitors you need to scroll to even see all the main categories...
rauljara 14y ago
Memrise (under the languages section) is pretty amazing. Or, at least seems amazing from 15 minutes of going through the Chinese stuff. I hate memorizing things, but the interface and visual cues for learning characters, and way they track your progress actually makes the process enjoyable for me. So far, at least. As with all these tools, you could teach yourself this stuff before, it'd just require more work and discipline for you to find the necessary books and make your own teaching plan. The advantage of these services is that they lower the friction to learn. Hopefully they reduce the friction enough so that there is a much higher ratio of enjoyment/reward to effort, making you more likely to stick with it. But you still have to stick with it to learn anything. Here's hoping I will.
- lix2333 14y ago
  I'm a big fan of Memrise. I think one of the best features is that it uses the community to suggest ways of remembering a word. People remember things differently, so if you have to see a picture of a baby crying with his mouth open to remember that the word 口 means mouth, then so be it. I'm hoping duolingo comes out with their Chinese track soon. That'll be very interesting.
- rickdale 14y ago
  Check out skritter.com for learning Chinese. These guys are incredible.
  - tomku 14y ago
    Seconding Skritter, they're amazing. I'd also like to add that they support Japanese kanji as well, and that their iOS apps are brilliant. The Chinese iOS app is out, and the Japanese one is in beta. I own a Wacom tablet that works great with the website, but more and more I find myself using the mobile app because it feels even more natural than writing with a pen, and I can do it anywhere.
    - philsnow 14y ago
      Skritter seems pretty sweet, but has no love for Cantonese; it supports traditional characters (so they're most of the way there), but the tone selection is mandarin-only and they only display pinyin and not some cantonese phoneticization like jyutping. Pretty slick, though.
lix2333 14y ago
Hey guys, I'm the creator of the site. Thanks for posting it Joel! I've been trying to delicately balance the line between too many links versus not enough links. I created this site in the first place because I had seen tons of these "best places to learn online" compilations, but all of them had about 200 links. Way too many to actually be useful. So I sought out to create something where there were only a few websites per category, but you could trust that they were all the best the web has to offer. As you can see from some of the comments on here, it's a fine line between too many and too few. I keep finding new ones that I think are too good not to include. I've been thinking lately about how I can make this site more useful to my users. It seems like most people come once or twice, see a link they like and don't come back until the next time they want to learn something. Although you could argue that's basically what the site is designed to do, I would like to see more repeat users. Any ideas? I have a few in mind already, but I wanted to see what the general consensus was.
- joelrunyon 14y ago
  You could pull together different courses and show how they complement each other to create tracts. Sure, you can just organize them and leave them as they are right now and let people pick what they want, but if you vetted the courses and had suggested tracts to send people through, that could be pretty valuable.
  - lix2333 14y ago
    This is basically what I was thinking about doing earlier. "This is actually something I was thinking about. For instance, say someone wants to learn Ruby. They could go to noexcuselist and find a step-by-step process that someone has made using only free resources. Does that sound like something that would be useful? The hard part is, I'd have to expand the site and make it social, so people can post their own guides. I definitely don't have the technical expertise for that." Is that what you had in mind?
    - joelrunyon 14y ago
      I'm thinking of it as a guidebook or as a course, for all the courses out there (if that makes any sense). So, wow, there are a ton of free resources out there - here's how to aggregate them, and utilize each of them most effectively with all the other free resources out there.
klez 14y ago
This reminds me of dmoz, centered on learning and without external suggestions.
iamyohann 14y ago
I would also like to add http://net.tutsplus.com http://net.tutsplus.com http://www.djangobook.com http://www.djangobook.com http://www.w3schools.com http://www.w3schools.com http://www.stackoverflow.com http://www.stackoverflow.com
- chasingtheflow 14y ago
  you had me until w3schools ... see http://w3fools.com/ http://w3fools.com/
  - captaintacos 14y ago
    Yea, came to say the same. Change that link to w3schools for the good one: https://developer-new.mozilla.org/en-US/ https://developer-new.mozilla.org/en-US/
danso 14y ago
This is a nice comprehensive list, but I think sites that focus on aggregation need to step it up beyond a simple text-listing. There needs to be some other metric/gauge beyond just the title of the course. It could even be as simple as icon(s) for whether the resource is a text-based site, available as an e-book, or taught mostly through videos. Or: a complexity level (beginner/intermediate/expert)...Or hell, just a 15 word summary of why you included the link. It's tough to design good taxonomies of course, but resources like this would greatly benefit from anything that would keep someone from having to click-through each link to discover the usefulness of each resource. Not trying to sound ungrateful, but a lot of these link-sites come up on HN (there are several based on just programming books, for instance)...It'd be great to see such things evolve into something more.
- lix2333 14y ago
  Thanks for the suggestions. I agree with you on all of those points. I think for the next version, it would be great to have icons and more of a description. As of right now, if you hover over the link, it'll explain what the website is focused on and what it generally covers.
wtvanhest 14y ago
strobist.com for photography
- jordn 14y ago
  http://cambridgeincolour.com http://cambridgeincolour.com for photography too. Particularly excellent guide on all the related concepts.
Juuumanji 14y ago
very nice aggregate you've created there.
sb1752 14y ago
Include Treehouse
- wallawe 14y ago
  Treehouse is a great resource but it isn't free
mattmaroon 14y ago
As someone who took up this hobby a couple years ago, I can attest that the collection of cooking links is awful. There's a difference between learning how to cook and a recipe, and these sites aren't even good at either. I've heard good things about chefhangout.com and rouxbe.com. And sadly most of the best cooking information still exists in printed books. Ruhlman's 20 is a great place to start.
- lix2333 14y ago
  Hey, thanks for the link. I've looked pretty hard for sites that teach cooking and they're pretty hard to come by! The cooking for engineers has been the best one that I've seen. Its surprising that there's not better resources. I didn't want to have to start linking to youtube channels...
  - mattmaroon 14y ago
    Sadly some of the cooking for engineers advice is just bad. I just perused it briefly. For instance it says to make sure to buy a cutting board that fits in your sink, then recommends wooden cutting boards. You don't soak wooden tools so why would you need it to fit in your sink? I love my butcher block and it's much larger than my sink. If you want to really jump into it, grab Ad Hoc at Home by Thomas Keller and just start cooking your way through it. Keller has an engineer's mindset and level of precision, and explains things assuming you're not stupid but don't know much about cooking.
    - kd0amg 14y ago
      Personally, I would avoid it because things that are too big to fit in the sink are awkward to wash, even if I don't soak them.
      - mattmaroon 14y ago
        I get a soapy sponge and scrub it off. I don't know what I need a sink for anyway. I don't want to get it as wet as it would if I ran it under the faucet. (Then I sanitize with vinegar/water and then coat with mineral oil. Cooking for engineers skips the sanitizing step and glosses over the oil.)
cshenoy 14y ago
What about Code School (http://www.codeschool.com http://www.codeschool.com)? I'm pretty sure that it's a well known place to learn programming, etc.
- captaintacos 14y ago
  I think he didn't include it because there is a (monthly) fee on this one. But some courses are free and I agree, I definitely endorse this one to be on the lilst. I am one of those learn-by-doing people and codeschool is just great. Like codecademy on steroids.
january14n 14y ago
I love the simplicity of this site. The site is very precise and easy to use.
unreal37 14y ago
A couple of good sites for this, that list not just the source website, but the actual courses themselves: http://www.openculture.com/freeonlinecourses http://www.openculture.com/freeonlinecourses http://www.class-central.com/ http://www.class-central.com/
sown 14y ago
You need feedback on whether you are doing well or not. That's the other part of on-line education that is missing.
johnbenwoo 14y ago
When in doubt, there's always Reddit to crowd-source this kind of thing - http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/tmtd4/what_are_the_most_intellectually_stimulating/c4o3csl http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/tmtd4/what_are_th...
- santigepigon 14y ago
  Don't forget the continued discussion on HN - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4240007 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4240007
gubatron 14y ago
Let's help Li with a list of resources to learn how to Draw, Paint, Illustrate, Graffiti, Stencil, etc. So far we only have this one: http://www.drawspace.com/ http://www.drawspace.com/ If you know of any other links please leave a comment
- lix2333 14y ago
  Yes, that happens to be the only one I have at the moment. I have 2-3 photography ones that fit under art as well... I was also looking for art history for my own interests, and that seems to be hard to come by too.
jordn 14y ago
From those that have taken them, which of the coursera/udacity/EdX courses are really really good? I go to the sites, get excited and register for everything but I know focus would mean I'd stick with them.
- stordoff 14y ago
  6.002x is an amazing course (it's the only EdX course that has run so far, but they have a great platform). The Udacity courses are generally slightly easier (e.g. they avoid the low-level details of the maths), but I really enjoyed CS373 (Programming a Robotic Car) and CS212 (Design of Computer Programs). The Coursera courses are a little hit and miss in terms of quality, but Quantum Computing and Design and Analysis of Algorithms are both very good.
omaranto 14y ago
The description of the arXiv is a little off, it says "Cornell's library of published academic research papers", while really the arXiv is mainly for preprints, i.e., papers that have not yet been published. It is true, however, that in some fields it is common for journals to let you keep a (non-final) version of your paper on the arXiv.
- lix2333 14y ago
  Thanks. I will update.
DoublelinxPR 14y ago
Nice list, would love to see more marketing How-Tos!
m_ke 14y ago
Programming ebooks: http://hackershelf.com http://hackershelf.com http://freecomputerbooks.com http://freecomputerbooks.com Video Lectures: https://www.coursera.org https://www.coursera.org http://www.udacity.com http://www.udacity.com http://www.academicearth.org/ http://www.academicearth.org/ http://www.learnerstv.com http://www.learnerstv.com http://lecturefox.com http://lecturefox.com http://thecodeplayer.com http://thecodeplayer.com http://www.cosmolearning.com http://www.cosmolearning.com http://www.class-central.com http://www.class-central.com http://videolectures.net http://videolectures.net
praveenhm 14y ago
Good one
killnine 14y ago
First time to how stuff works. Selected "mind blower" of the day (crop circles) or how crop circles work is what I thought I'd be reading. Not only does it break a short article into 5,yes five pages, but the howto part doesn't come until Page 5, but the howto is useless speculation. I was tricked into wasting my time and loading 5 pages. IMO it is a horrible site

378 points by joelrunyon 14y ago

Cool site, simple and with great links

This is great, and I like the "no excuse" angle, but the list is a little overwhelming. The problem of self-learning today is not to find ressources, it's to find a good one and stick to it until you mastered the subject. If there are several good ones, just pick one of them. On this subject, see The Paradox of choice[1] and Buridan's donkey[2]. Sidenote: For me, "Windows 7, OneNote + more for students" and Dreamspark go to the same link. [1] http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6127548813950043200 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6127548813950043200 [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buridan%27s_ass http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buridan%27s_ass

countessa 14y ago
Agreed. What I find is usually missing from a lot of lists of "learning" online is a time-proven track through a subject to take you from beginner to expert.
jschuur 14y ago
I think the problem with self learning is making the information digestable enough and regular gratification to the user about the things they've just learned (challenges that gradually increase in difficulty). Highlight which of the sites offer that (with icons?) and it would help user pick the right sites based on their patience level e.g..
- joelrunyon 14y ago
  I think the finality of learning "courses" of traditional education has something to it. There's something to be said for having a task at hand and accomplishing a series of steps rather that lead to something rather than a mashup of useful tutorials and lectures (no-matter how brilliant they are), that don't have an underlying current, theme or curriculum to them.
  - lix2333 14y ago
    This is actually something I was thinking about. For instance, say someone wants to learn Ruby. They could go to noexcuselist and find a step-by-step process that someone has made using only free resources. Does that sound like something that would be useful? The hard part is, I'd have to expand the site and make it social, so people can post their own guides. I definitely don't have the technical expertise for that.
    - hv23 14y ago
      I built a basic version of a site that does just that called Polymath - http://beta.whatispolymath.com http://beta.whatispolymath.com (here's a sample course on Ruby, for example - http://beta.whatispolymath.com/courses/12/ruby-on-rails-for-beginners/ http://beta.whatispolymath.com/courses/12/ruby-on-rails-for-...). No longer working on it, but email me if you want to chat more.
joelrunyon 14y ago
I thought it could have actually been built out a bit more. If they created a few more categories (and sub-categories), they could really have something very cool on their hands.
- rodolphoarruda 14y ago
  I've got the same feeling. I'd add categories for education level, accreditation and course length. Having a "starting soon" section would also be fine, listing the courses starting between now and the next two weeks.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
aoprisan 14y ago
brings us back to the days of web directories
lix2333 14y ago
I agree with you on 'picking one' and sticking to it. Maybe I should highlight one source for each that I strongly recommend or something? Also, thanks for the heads up about the Dreamspark link. Looks like windows recently redirected it to the same site. You used to be able to download Windows 7 and other resources for free as a student...
americandesi333 14y ago
I would be curious to know what you think of our self learning site called LearningJar.com, where we are helping people figure out the best resources to learn skills and follow their progress.

hrydgard 14y ago

Some good links, but something like this really needs search and filtering, and some sort of category overview - as it is, on most monitors you need to scroll to even see all the main categories...

rauljara 14y ago

Memrise (under the languages section) is pretty amazing. Or, at least seems amazing from 15 minutes of going through the Chinese stuff. I hate memorizing things, but the interface and visual cues for learning characters, and way they track your progress actually makes the process enjoyable for me. So far, at least. As with all these tools, you could teach yourself this stuff before, it'd just require more work and discipline for you to find the necessary books and make your own teaching plan. The advantage of these services is that they lower the friction to learn. Hopefully they reduce the friction enough so that there is a much higher ratio of enjoyment/reward to effort, making you more likely to stick with it. But you still have to stick with it to learn anything. Here's hoping I will.

lix2333 14y ago
I'm a big fan of Memrise. I think one of the best features is that it uses the community to suggest ways of remembering a word. People remember things differently, so if you have to see a picture of a baby crying with his mouth open to remember that the word 口 means mouth, then so be it. I'm hoping duolingo comes out with their Chinese track soon. That'll be very interesting.
rickdale 14y ago
Check out skritter.com for learning Chinese. These guys are incredible.
- tomku 14y ago
  Seconding Skritter, they're amazing. I'd also like to add that they support Japanese kanji as well, and that their iOS apps are brilliant. The Chinese iOS app is out, and the Japanese one is in beta. I own a Wacom tablet that works great with the website, but more and more I find myself using the mobile app because it feels even more natural than writing with a pen, and I can do it anywhere.
  - philsnow 14y ago
    Skritter seems pretty sweet, but has no love for Cantonese; it supports traditional characters (so they're most of the way there), but the tone selection is mandarin-only and they only display pinyin and not some cantonese phoneticization like jyutping. Pretty slick, though.

lix2333 14y ago

Hey guys, I'm the creator of the site. Thanks for posting it Joel! I've been trying to delicately balance the line between too many links versus not enough links. I created this site in the first place because I had seen tons of these "best places to learn online" compilations, but all of them had about 200 links. Way too many to actually be useful. So I sought out to create something where there were only a few websites per category, but you could trust that they were all the best the web has to offer. As you can see from some of the comments on here, it's a fine line between too many and too few. I keep finding new ones that I think are too good not to include. I've been thinking lately about how I can make this site more useful to my users. It seems like most people come once or twice, see a link they like and don't come back until the next time they want to learn something. Although you could argue that's basically what the site is designed to do, I would like to see more repeat users. Any ideas? I have a few in mind already, but I wanted to see what the general consensus was.

joelrunyon 14y ago
You could pull together different courses and show how they complement each other to create tracts. Sure, you can just organize them and leave them as they are right now and let people pick what they want, but if you vetted the courses and had suggested tracts to send people through, that could be pretty valuable.
- lix2333 14y ago
  This is basically what I was thinking about doing earlier. "This is actually something I was thinking about. For instance, say someone wants to learn Ruby. They could go to noexcuselist and find a step-by-step process that someone has made using only free resources. Does that sound like something that would be useful? The hard part is, I'd have to expand the site and make it social, so people can post their own guides. I definitely don't have the technical expertise for that." Is that what you had in mind?
  - joelrunyon 14y ago
    I'm thinking of it as a guidebook or as a course, for all the courses out there (if that makes any sense). So, wow, there are a ton of free resources out there - here's how to aggregate them, and utilize each of them most effectively with all the other free resources out there.

klez 14y ago

This reminds me of dmoz, centered on learning and without external suggestions.

iamyohann 14y ago

I would also like to add http://net.tutsplus.com http://net.tutsplus.com http://www.djangobook.com http://www.djangobook.com http://www.w3schools.com http://www.w3schools.com http://www.stackoverflow.com http://www.stackoverflow.com

chasingtheflow 14y ago
you had me until w3schools ... see http://w3fools.com/ http://w3fools.com/
- captaintacos 14y ago
  Yea, came to say the same. Change that link to w3schools for the good one: https://developer-new.mozilla.org/en-US/ https://developer-new.mozilla.org/en-US/

danso 14y ago

This is a nice comprehensive list, but I think sites that focus on aggregation need to step it up beyond a simple text-listing. There needs to be some other metric/gauge beyond just the title of the course. It could even be as simple as icon(s) for whether the resource is a text-based site, available as an e-book, or taught mostly through videos. Or: a complexity level (beginner/intermediate/expert)...Or hell, just a 15 word summary of why you included the link. It's tough to design good taxonomies of course, but resources like this would greatly benefit from anything that would keep someone from having to click-through each link to discover the usefulness of each resource. Not trying to sound ungrateful, but a lot of these link-sites come up on HN (there are several based on just programming books, for instance)...It'd be great to see such things evolve into something more.

lix2333 14y ago
Thanks for the suggestions. I agree with you on all of those points. I think for the next version, it would be great to have icons and more of a description. As of right now, if you hover over the link, it'll explain what the website is focused on and what it generally covers.

wtvanhest 14y ago

strobist.com for photography

jordn 14y ago
http://cambridgeincolour.com http://cambridgeincolour.com for photography too. Particularly excellent guide on all the related concepts.

Juuumanji 14y ago

very nice aggregate you've created there.

sb1752 14y ago

Include Treehouse

wallawe 14y ago
Treehouse is a great resource but it isn't free

mattmaroon 14y ago

As someone who took up this hobby a couple years ago, I can attest that the collection of cooking links is awful. There's a difference between learning how to cook and a recipe, and these sites aren't even good at either. I've heard good things about chefhangout.com and rouxbe.com. And sadly most of the best cooking information still exists in printed books. Ruhlman's 20 is a great place to start.

lix2333 14y ago
Hey, thanks for the link. I've looked pretty hard for sites that teach cooking and they're pretty hard to come by! The cooking for engineers has been the best one that I've seen. Its surprising that there's not better resources. I didn't want to have to start linking to youtube channels...
- mattmaroon 14y ago
  Sadly some of the cooking for engineers advice is just bad. I just perused it briefly. For instance it says to make sure to buy a cutting board that fits in your sink, then recommends wooden cutting boards. You don't soak wooden tools so why would you need it to fit in your sink? I love my butcher block and it's much larger than my sink. If you want to really jump into it, grab Ad Hoc at Home by Thomas Keller and just start cooking your way through it. Keller has an engineer's mindset and level of precision, and explains things assuming you're not stupid but don't know much about cooking.
  - kd0amg 14y ago
    Personally, I would avoid it because things that are too big to fit in the sink are awkward to wash, even if I don't soak them.
    - mattmaroon 14y ago
      I get a soapy sponge and scrub it off. I don't know what I need a sink for anyway. I don't want to get it as wet as it would if I ran it under the faucet. (Then I sanitize with vinegar/water and then coat with mineral oil. Cooking for engineers skips the sanitizing step and glosses over the oil.)

cshenoy 14y ago

What about Code School (http://www.codeschool.com http://www.codeschool.com)? I'm pretty sure that it's a well known place to learn programming, etc.

captaintacos 14y ago
I think he didn't include it because there is a (monthly) fee on this one. But some courses are free and I agree, I definitely endorse this one to be on the lilst. I am one of those learn-by-doing people and codeschool is just great. Like codecademy on steroids.

january14n 14y ago

I love the simplicity of this site. The site is very precise and easy to use.

unreal37 14y ago

A couple of good sites for this, that list not just the source website, but the actual courses themselves: http://www.openculture.com/freeonlinecourses http://www.openculture.com/freeonlinecourses http://www.class-central.com/ http://www.class-central.com/

sown 14y ago

You need feedback on whether you are doing well or not. That's the other part of on-line education that is missing.

johnbenwoo 14y ago

When in doubt, there's always Reddit to crowd-source this kind of thing - http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/tmtd4/what_are_the_most_intellectually_stimulating/c4o3csl http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/tmtd4/what_are_th...

santigepigon 14y ago
Don't forget the continued discussion on HN - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4240007 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4240007

gubatron 14y ago

Let's help Li with a list of resources to learn how to Draw, Paint, Illustrate, Graffiti, Stencil, etc. So far we only have this one: http://www.drawspace.com/ http://www.drawspace.com/ If you know of any other links please leave a comment

lix2333 14y ago
Yes, that happens to be the only one I have at the moment. I have 2-3 photography ones that fit under art as well... I was also looking for art history for my own interests, and that seems to be hard to come by too.

jordn 14y ago

From those that have taken them, which of the coursera/udacity/EdX courses are really really good? I go to the sites, get excited and register for everything but I know focus would mean I'd stick with them.

stordoff 14y ago
6.002x is an amazing course (it's the only EdX course that has run so far, but they have a great platform). The Udacity courses are generally slightly easier (e.g. they avoid the low-level details of the maths), but I really enjoyed CS373 (Programming a Robotic Car) and CS212 (Design of Computer Programs). The Coursera courses are a little hit and miss in terms of quality, but Quantum Computing and Design and Analysis of Algorithms are both very good.

omaranto 14y ago

The description of the arXiv is a little off, it says "Cornell's library of published academic research papers", while really the arXiv is mainly for preprints, i.e., papers that have not yet been published. It is true, however, that in some fields it is common for journals to let you keep a (non-final) version of your paper on the arXiv.

lix2333 14y ago
Thanks. I will update.

DoublelinxPR 14y ago

Nice list, would love to see more marketing How-Tos!

m_ke 14y ago

Programming ebooks: http://hackershelf.com http://hackershelf.com http://freecomputerbooks.com http://freecomputerbooks.com Video Lectures: https://www.coursera.org https://www.coursera.org http://www.udacity.com http://www.udacity.com http://www.academicearth.org/ http://www.academicearth.org/ http://www.learnerstv.com http://www.learnerstv.com http://lecturefox.com http://lecturefox.com http://thecodeplayer.com http://thecodeplayer.com http://www.cosmolearning.com http://www.cosmolearning.com http://www.class-central.com http://www.class-central.com http://videolectures.net http://videolectures.net

praveenhm 14y ago

Good one

killnine 14y ago

First time to how stuff works. Selected "mind blower" of the day (crop circles) or how crop circles work is what I thought I'd be reading. Not only does it break a short article into 5,yes five pages, but the howto part doesn't come until Page 5, but the howto is useless speculation. I was tricked into wasting my time and loading 5 pages. IMO it is a horrible site