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Ask HN: What are the best MOOCs you've taken?

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Re: Ask HN: What are the best MOOCs you've taken?

#55
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Probabilistic Graphical Models, Daphne Koller – the first course in the specialization has a very good and engaging start, but the gap between lectures and problems widens quickly after that (maybe that's why the author boasts about a "challenging" course "not for everyone"). I'm hesitant to take the next course of the specialization.

PGM was brutal... At Stanford straight As students were happy just to pass...

It's indeed dense and packed with many intermediate intuitions.

On the other hand, I still feel that the course is often unnecessarily brutal and could use better explanations.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best MOOCs you've taken?

#56
post #7

Nand2Tetris (part 1)

Seconded, with part 2. I didn’t major in compsci, so I had never learned how computers work in any deep sense, and this was really eye opening. It takes you through how to build a cpu and then how a succession of binary instructions produces interesting behavior, and then how you can layer abstractions on top, like assembly language and stack operations, and then how to compile code down to those binary instructions and what has to happen at the OS level for this code to run.

It’s also opened my eyes to how much more I still have to learn!

You can do parts 1 and 2 at the same time, btw.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best MOOCs you've taken?

#60

Learning how to learn, Barbara Oakley, Coursera. By far and away the best learning course I've taken in my life as well, I wish it had been available before I had completed my formal education.

And if you've never taken any MOOC before this is a great one to start with because: it's only four weeks long and it's free.
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