Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 320 posts

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

#101

Post by jcadam »

sampo wrote: post #26

Most fun: Pat Pattison, Songwriting, Coursera. Very good lectures, very good material, very well presented. Teaches a lot about writing song lyrics in just 6 weeks, breaks it nicely down to steps and recipes. I used to think that the best feature of MOOCs is the automatic grading and feedback from programming homework, but in this course, for the homework songwriting you gave and got feedback from 3-5 random people i…

> Nicest: Andrew Ng, Machine Learning, Coursera. Interesting topic, well-planned material, very well avoids going into the mathy details, but still conveys a feeling of understanding of the topic, so accessible to a wide audience. (Martin Odersky, Functional Programming Principles in Scala, Coursera, was almost equally nice, but had some rough edges in the first run.)

Have to agree with all of this. I've taken Andrew Ng's Machine Learning course (only time I've paid for a 'verified' certificate), and found it a great overview of ML, though I'm not sure I'd feel comfortable telling anyone I have a good understanding of ML :)

Odersky's FP in Scala was actually the first Coursera course I took (during its initial run, I think). -- I also found the follow up Reactive Programming course to be excellent as well.

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

#102

Post by MadSudaca »

Model thinking (https://www.coursera.org/learn/model-thinking)

Taught by Prof. Scott E. Page, teaches about models in several fields and how they're used to aid thinking about complex issues by careful design and usage.

A couple of insights: all models are wrong but some are useful. Having many models about a situation to help your thinking is better than having only one, and much better than none. Complex models are not necessarily better than simple ones.

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

#103

Post by runevault »

sampo wrote: post #26

Most fun: Pat Pattison, Songwriting, Coursera. Very good lectures, very good material, very well presented. Teaches a lot about writing song lyrics in just 6 weeks, breaks it nicely down to steps and recipes. I used to think that the best feature of MOOCs is the automatic grading and feedback from programming homework, but in this course, for the homework songwriting you gave and got feedback from 3-5 random people i…

On the Pattison one, out of curiosity did it use his Writing Better Lyrics for the material? I've read the book and love it to pieces even though I write prose, the way he explores words and phrases is sort of magical.

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

#104

Post by baristaGeek »

Pretty useful and well taught: React JS parts I and II in Codecademy, JavaScript promises in Udacity.

Just pretty fun: Intro to Machine Learning in Udacity

As a general comment, I would like to say that MOOCs tend to be superficial and that the best way to learn a new technology or paradigm is just to read the docs and try hacking on a project. However, MOOCs can be a good format to simply get a broad perspective on some topic though.

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

#107

Post by saboot »

rectang wrote: post #2

Khan Academy math, because of the exercises. They are consistent, not very buggy, gamified, and consumable in small or large amounts. Sal Khan is a good communicator and the videos are decent, but it's the exercises that make Khan Academy exceptional.

I have been assisting my younger brother in his math deficiencies. Khan Academy has made it so much easier. I'll have him watch several videos on the topic we need to cover, and then work through his assignment together. This lets me focus on the specific areas he didn't understand instead of trying to reteach everything. Really wish I had this when I was younger.

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

#108

Post by allanbreyes »

ScoutOrgo wrote: post #20

Fast.ai's (fast.ai) deep learning and machine learning courses. No ads, good notes/forum, and very approachable material for anyone that knows basic coding.

Have you considered deeplearning.ai? I was on the fence between the two, but ended up taking deeplearning.ai after reading a review[0].

> The fast AI course mainly teaches you the art of driving while Andrew’s course primarily teaches you the engineering behind the car.

I'll probably take some of the fast.ai courses at some point, but the deeplearning.ai one was great.

[0]: https://towardsdatascience.com/thoughts-after-taking-the-dee...

Post reply on HN