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Pluralsight raises $135M to expand online learning for professionals

35 points by richards 12y ago

rational-future 12y ago
IMHO 3 months of hard work on Pluralsight courses can give one more practical programming skills than any 3 year Bachelor degree in CS. Debugging, CRUD, somewhat new JS/mobile frameworks are what the majority of software developers need to know for their 9 to 5 job.
- lukasm 12y ago
  I highly doubt that any online service has an order of magnitude better performance than a uni.
  - wehadfun 12y ago
    I think for specific new techs pluralsight will beat a university. Univerity are not going to teach you how to use d3.js
    - joshpadnick 12y ago
      This is essentially the "Computer Science vs. Programming" debate, although Uni gives some programming experience and Pluralsight gives some computer science. Yevgeniy Brikman maintains a great blog and wrote about this[1]. [1] http://brikis98.blogspot.com/2014/05/dont-learn-to-code-learn-to-think.html http://brikis98.blogspot.com/2014/05/dont-learn-to-code-lear...
  - rational-future 12y ago
    Unis lack professors with the practical knowledge of Pluralsight instructors and they are centered on areas like math and algorithms, that are fun, but not of much use for somebody building an enterprise CRUD site or mobile app. Knowing your IDE, the best way to accomplish a task in a given framework, how to work around limitations of tools and protocols IMHO is something unis don't teach much, while very important for the average Joe developer.
  - csomar 12y ago
    Define "a uni." I think the parent argument is very flawed because he is comparing a specific entity to universities (which varies in quality really a LOT)
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- JeremyMorgan 12y ago
  I agree, as long as you throw in some practical experience building things. Not to discredit universities, but much of the content is theory because the existing model simply cannot keep up with advancing technology. Core CS theory is great and essential but it won't help you in everyday life as a coder like actual application will. On the other hand you could argue that a programmer get enough CS theory from Pluralsight courses to become decent, or even great, but that piece of paper is still pretty important to many folks out there.
joshpadnick 12y ago
Sites like Safari Books Online and Pluralsight have transformed the way I learn new technologies and techniques. That being said, I find myself getting 3x or 4x the value out of Safari Books Online. Something about those Pluralsight videos makes it harder for me to extract piecemeal knowledge, versus finding the relevant content in a book. Still for $29/month it's an unbelievable value. My only other issue is I feel their beta site makes it harder to find courses and is a step backward. Hopefully they'll remedy that.
- rational-future 12y ago
  Hmmm that's interesting. Almost any study I've seen implies that the most efficient way of learning is see-do. I think what makes Pluralsight and similar training videos work for me is having multiple big monitors (3x 27'') with the training video, IDE and browser easily visible at any time.
  - joshpadnick 12y ago
    I hear you on that. I guess Pluralsight is like a "course on demand" and requires an hour or more of sit-down time, whereas Safari is really "ad hoc learning".
    - andrewsavikas 12y ago
      As Tim said, Safari is actually both (2000+ on-demand video courses plus all the books and a bunch of conference videos). And in our usage data, we see most people do both things -- short "ad hoc" learning, especially during the work day, with longer sessions of activity, both in video and books, in the evenings. The trend is especially pronounced with mobile devices, as mobile usage peaks on the weekend and includes a much longer average session length than we see on the desktop.
- marpstar 12y ago
  Same here. While it seems like all of my colleagues prefer videos, I can't stand how slow videos go. Maybe it's because I read faster than most people I know, but I'll take a solid book over videos any day.
JeremyMorgan 12y ago
This is fantastic news. Of all the sites I've tried within a similar vein, Pluralsight is leaps and bounds ahead of the rest. I will still go back and hit a book for certain topics but if you want to get up and running fast it's unbeatable. Plus you can take courses in a series (say from beginner to advanced) and it feels like one large course even if it's different authors. I know it has it's detractors but I love this site and it's worth every penny for me.
colinbartlett 12y ago
These are the guys that bought Peepcode right? Those are some fantastic teaching tools. Glad to see them pushing forward.
curiouscats 12y ago
Blog from Pluralsight on "Company culture discussions" http://culture.pluralsight.com/ http://culture.pluralsight.com/ I find the blog to be worth reading.
scrabble 12y ago
Signed up for Pluralsight this month, and I'm getting a fair amount of value from it so far, but I don't feel like that value is going to be a straight line over time. I feel pretty confident that it's going to decline as I consume more material of interest to me and less material that I'm interested is created simultaneously. At $29 / month it's a good value for me now, but in a couple of months I'm pretty sure I'm going to drop my membership until something comes a long that I must watch. (This time Hanselman and Conery's Art of Public Speaking got me to sign up.)
aikah 12y ago
Nice, Pluralsignt have great courses about concrete products so it's really fast to pick a tech /language/framework. I however think the production value is inferior to Lynda.com, especially the sound recording. They should invest in that.
minusSeven 12y ago
I had pluralsight membership for a month. Although the materials looks exhaustive I felt none of them went into great depth. They are good for first time use and know something in short time but beyond that there is nothing of value. And there are innumerable websites on the internet that teaches these stuff for free(maybe not all video streaming sites).
tatqx 12y ago
Around 6 months back, when there were hardly any books on AngularJS and related JavaScript technologies (Jasmine, Karma, etc), I was got a running start on my project after going through several courses on AngularJS and JavaScript on Pluralsight. Writing a book takes way more time than creating a video tutorial and, I think, in this rapidly developing programming landscape Pluralsight provides the right edge when it comes to learning new libraries, frameworks and techniques.

35 points by richards 12y ago

IMHO 3 months of hard work on Pluralsight courses can give one more practical programming skills than any 3 year Bachelor degree in CS. Debugging, CRUD, somewhat new JS/mobile frameworks are what the majority of software developers need to know for their 9 to 5 job.

lukasm 12y ago
I highly doubt that any online service has an order of magnitude better performance than a uni.
- wehadfun 12y ago
  I think for specific new techs pluralsight will beat a university. Univerity are not going to teach you how to use d3.js
  - joshpadnick 12y ago
    This is essentially the "Computer Science vs. Programming" debate, although Uni gives some programming experience and Pluralsight gives some computer science. Yevgeniy Brikman maintains a great blog and wrote about this[1]. [1] http://brikis98.blogspot.com/2014/05/dont-learn-to-code-learn-to-think.html http://brikis98.blogspot.com/2014/05/dont-learn-to-code-lear...
- rational-future 12y ago
  Unis lack professors with the practical knowledge of Pluralsight instructors and they are centered on areas like math and algorithms, that are fun, but not of much use for somebody building an enterprise CRUD site or mobile app. Knowing your IDE, the best way to accomplish a task in a given framework, how to work around limitations of tools and protocols IMHO is something unis don't teach much, while very important for the average Joe developer.
- csomar 12y ago
  Define "a uni." I think the parent argument is very flawed because he is comparing a specific entity to universities (which varies in quality really a LOT)
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
JeremyMorgan 12y ago
I agree, as long as you throw in some practical experience building things. Not to discredit universities, but much of the content is theory because the existing model simply cannot keep up with advancing technology. Core CS theory is great and essential but it won't help you in everyday life as a coder like actual application will. On the other hand you could argue that a programmer get enough CS theory from Pluralsight courses to become decent, or even great, but that piece of paper is still pretty important to many folks out there.

joshpadnick 12y ago

Sites like Safari Books Online and Pluralsight have transformed the way I learn new technologies and techniques. That being said, I find myself getting 3x or 4x the value out of Safari Books Online. Something about those Pluralsight videos makes it harder for me to extract piecemeal knowledge, versus finding the relevant content in a book. Still for $29/month it's an unbelievable value. My only other issue is I feel their beta site makes it harder to find courses and is a step backward. Hopefully they'll remedy that.

rational-future 12y ago
Hmmm that's interesting. Almost any study I've seen implies that the most efficient way of learning is see-do. I think what makes Pluralsight and similar training videos work for me is having multiple big monitors (3x 27'') with the training video, IDE and browser easily visible at any time.
- joshpadnick 12y ago
  I hear you on that. I guess Pluralsight is like a "course on demand" and requires an hour or more of sit-down time, whereas Safari is really "ad hoc learning".
  - andrewsavikas 12y ago
    As Tim said, Safari is actually both (2000+ on-demand video courses plus all the books and a bunch of conference videos). And in our usage data, we see most people do both things -- short "ad hoc" learning, especially during the work day, with longer sessions of activity, both in video and books, in the evenings. The trend is especially pronounced with mobile devices, as mobile usage peaks on the weekend and includes a much longer average session length than we see on the desktop.
marpstar 12y ago
Same here. While it seems like all of my colleagues prefer videos, I can't stand how slow videos go. Maybe it's because I read faster than most people I know, but I'll take a solid book over videos any day.

JeremyMorgan 12y ago

This is fantastic news. Of all the sites I've tried within a similar vein, Pluralsight is leaps and bounds ahead of the rest. I will still go back and hit a book for certain topics but if you want to get up and running fast it's unbeatable. Plus you can take courses in a series (say from beginner to advanced) and it feels like one large course even if it's different authors. I know it has it's detractors but I love this site and it's worth every penny for me.

colinbartlett 12y ago

These are the guys that bought Peepcode right? Those are some fantastic teaching tools. Glad to see them pushing forward.

curiouscats 12y ago

Blog from Pluralsight on "Company culture discussions" http://culture.pluralsight.com/ http://culture.pluralsight.com/ I find the blog to be worth reading.

scrabble 12y ago

Signed up for Pluralsight this month, and I'm getting a fair amount of value from it so far, but I don't feel like that value is going to be a straight line over time. I feel pretty confident that it's going to decline as I consume more material of interest to me and less material that I'm interested is created simultaneously. At $29 / month it's a good value for me now, but in a couple of months I'm pretty sure I'm going to drop my membership until something comes a long that I must watch. (This time Hanselman and Conery's Art of Public Speaking got me to sign up.)

aikah 12y ago

Nice, Pluralsignt have great courses about concrete products so it's really fast to pick a tech /language/framework. I however think the production value is inferior to Lynda.com, especially the sound recording. They should invest in that.

minusSeven 12y ago

I had pluralsight membership for a month. Although the materials looks exhaustive I felt none of them went into great depth. They are good for first time use and know something in short time but beyond that there is nothing of value. And there are innumerable websites on the internet that teaches these stuff for free(maybe not all video streaming sites).

tatqx 12y ago

Around 6 months back, when there were hardly any books on AngularJS and related JavaScript technologies (Jasmine, Karma, etc), I was got a running start on my project after going through several courses on AngularJS and JavaScript on Pluralsight. Writing a book takes way more time than creating a video tutorial and, I think, in this rapidly developing programming landscape Pluralsight provides the right edge when it comes to learning new libraries, frameworks and techniques.