Buddhism and Modern Psychology by Princeton. This course was just mind-blowing for me. It talks a lot about how our evolutionary survival mechanisms prevent us from seeing the world clearly. If anyone has taken similar courses would love to hear.
Ask HN: What are the best MOOCs you've taken?
151–160 of 320 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are the best MOOCs you've taken?
#152Nand2Tetris (part 1)
The second part is awesome too. The first part shows how to design an unoptimized and simplistic, but complete and working 16-bit CPU and RAM from logic gates. The second part builds a whole software stack on top of it using a virtual stack-based VM: - CPU assembler; - a (AOT) compiler from the VM opcodes into the CPU assembly; - a compiler from the high-level language called Jack (an educational mix of Java/C with m…
Wow, someone made an FPS in Jack on the Hack computer? Crazy!
(Just completed parts 1 and 2 last week on Coursera btw, really opened my eyes!)
Re: Ask HN: What are the best MOOCs you've taken?
#153Can anyone recommend course about assembly ? Which focuses especially on embedded systems (arm, avr, pic archs) ?
Azeria Labs has a good introduction to ARM assembly and ARM exploitation.
https://azeria-labs.com/writing-arm-assembly-part-1/
Re: Ask HN: What are the best MOOCs you've taken?
#154Intro to finance - Gautam Kaul I am not sure if they still offer this course for free. I took it in 2011 and I really like it’s homework assignments. Gautam is also hilarious in his teaching style.
I've taken it around the same time, too.
To this day the name of the professor brings a smile to my face. If I remember correctly, I didn't even plan to take this course (had no interest in finance), but after watching the Intro video I was hooked.
Re: Ask HN: What are the best MOOCs you've taken?
#155Robert Sedgewick's Algorithms has been one of the best for me, not only as a general refresher on algorithms, but also as a way of better understanding complexity notations.
I enjoyed the lectures quite a bit, but ran into a lot of trouble with the problem sets. I'm wondering if anyone else had a similar experience, or if I should give it another chance and try some different approach? The problem I had was that he gave you a mostly finished program which utilizes the percolation algorithm, but then asks you to fill in some data structures and functions to make it work, and finally a tes…
I did not run into any trouble with Sedgewick's course. His coding assignments are the most elegant and comprehensive I have seen which leave virtually no room for ambiguity. But they are challenging indeed.
> "he gave you a mostly finished program..." What? He gives you an API with public methods and you have to do the implementation. How is this a mostly finished program?
> "The issue I had was that there was basically no feedback"
The tests are your feedback. When a test fails you need to figure out why the test is failing and what's wrong with your code or if you understood the requirements incorrectly.
I absolutely enjoyed his courses and finished both of them with all the assignments. His assignments are not something you can knock out in an hour. It usually took me at least 3-4 hours to complete any assignment sometimes even more than that.
I also did Roughgarden's course and loved it. He is an awesome teacher. Both Sedgewick's and Roughgarden's courses are very good but they have different approaches. I found Roughgarden's coding assignment a lot easier than Sedgewick's.
Make use of the course forum. If something is not clear ask questions on the forum. Though I found that Sedgewick's requirements specification are very comprehensive and unambiguous. In fact while doing the course I wished software requirements on the job were anywhere close to that comprehensive in real life.
Re: Ask HN: What are the best MOOCs you've taken?
#156Algorithms I and II by Tim Roughgarden on Coursera -- amazing teaching style with a lot of depth and math background.
ML by Andrew Ng is also another great example of a MOOC that could be executed very well.
From non CS related courses I really liked Intro To Finance by Gautam Kaul, also on Coursera.
Re: Ask HN: What are the best MOOCs you've taken?
#157MIT OCW contains quite a few true gems. These lectures will still be worth watching 100 years from now.
- Differential Equations from 2015: https://ocw.mit.edu/resources/res-18-009-learn-differential-...
- The original SICP recordings from 1986: https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-compu...
Re: Ask HN: What are the best MOOCs you've taken?
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would you say this course would help learn languages? I'm currently self-studying Japanese, so adding another "class" would be difficult time-wise. But if this Coursera course would help, it might be worth the time for me. Thanks!
100%, YES. Self-taught Japanese, Chinese, etc. Course changed me. Wouldn't be a programmer without it. Sidenote, there's no PM function here, but my email's in my profile. Shoot me a note if you want any tips on Japanese etc. Got decks of anki flashcards for daaaays.
Too late to edit, so, summary of what I sent OP in my email:
1. Taking the coursera course probably a valuable use of time, alongside more general "meta-learning" about personal psychology. Books such as "How to Win friends..." "Power of Habit..." "Wherever you go, there you are..." etc
2. Use "anki" or "ankidroid" depending on platform. Get public decks "Hiragana with stroke diagrams and audio," "Kana (katakana)," "Core 2k/6k optimized Japanese vocabulary," and use following youtube video to then create forward/backwards cards: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnbKwHEQ1mA
3. Use this resource for japanese grammar and complete exercises: http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar
4. Use this to practice listening skills: http://www.nhk.or.jp/radionews/
5. Create and write down a clear reason for learning Japanese, and potentially book a flight (well ahead of time, and if economically viable) to set a concrete timeline for learning.
EDIT: By the way, the "Core 2k..." cards have example phrases for every word. I don't recommend trying to memorize these, but I do recommend reading the sentence out loud for every card. Muscle memory, further familiarity with grammar, helping sort whether a given verb is a ru- or non-ru verb, etc.
Re: Ask HN: What are the best MOOCs you've taken?
#159I really enjoyed Discrete Optimization, Pascal Van Hentenryck, Coursera. [1] I did it in 2013 and it looks like it's changed a little: vehicle routing seems a good, practical topic right now. Optimizing systems is one of my favorite pleasures, so this course was great for me.
Re: Ask HN: What are the best MOOCs you've taken?
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could you expand on how it changed things for you? How did you learn them before vs after?
> It changed the way I learn any new programming language. I can say the same and I can offer my reasons: until this course I saw every language like a little island; after this course I understood that programs are just a collection of features: various typing systems, static/dynamic scoping, lazy/eager evaluation, etc. It's a ton easier to learn a new language by identifying these features than by looking at a lang…
Interesting. Did you feel like you needed a strong understanding of compilers or automata to really grok what was going on (I think automata relate to programming languages, but could be mistaken)?