I have created a Github repository listing all of the "main" MOOCs here.
Ask HN: What are the best MOOCs you've taken?
291–300 of 320 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are the best MOOCs you've taken?
#292I took the OCaml MOOC to learn OCaml programming. It had many portioned exercises, The video content was very high quality. The online code editor was pretty amazing as well, as it autoformatted the code as I typed it and even compiled and executed in the browser. Some of the problems required one to think outside the box. https://www.fun-mooc.fr/courses/parisdiderot/56002S02/sessio...
do you know where the video lectures are uploaded to?
edit: i asked and i shall receive: https://archive.org/details/fun_ocaml_mooc
Re: Ask HN: What are the best MOOCs you've taken?
#293Robert 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…
The best way to handle test failure is read the output in detail and see why. If it’s performance (not fast enough) then I usually found that I’d missed a point in the lectures that greatly sped things up. None of the solutions require careful hand optimization, they are well designed to require the right algorithm and data representation. Another problem you may run into is correctness. Some of the tests have tricky edge cases and you can try to see from the test output what that case is and simulate it yourself. You’re not crazy though, some of the exercises are hard and I asked for help in the forums when I got stuck .
Re: Ask HN: What are the best MOOCs you've taken?
#294Andrew Ngs machine learning course as well as both Princeton Algorithms courses were the most challenging and valuable.
I did all the Scala ones a few years ago, the most interesting was building a distributed key value store.
There’s a really online interesting course on Milton at Yale. Great lectures but I didn’t try to work through any of the assignments.
Not really a Mooc but I recommend both Duolingo and Memrise for learning language skills on your phone
Re: Ask HN: What are the best MOOCs you've taken?
#295Most 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…
+100 to Andrew NGs machine learning. Inspired me enough about the potential of online education to start a (now reasonably successful edtech) company!
Re: Ask HN: What are the best MOOCs you've taken?
#296Most 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…
I wish I enjoyed Andrew Ng's Deep Learning courses. For him being the cofounder of Coursera the production quality (audio/video) was pretty lacking. The whine/distortion on the audio made it difficult to listen to on headphones. Many of the exercises were either a bit too railsroaded and simple, or poorly explained in their goals and barely worked. I really didn't like his style of writing on the digital whiteboard. Perhaps just a side effect of a MOOC, but he never checks for understanding in even the most basic of ways.
While I'm not perfect, I spent nearly 3 years teaching at a bootcamp fulltime, so perhaps I have different standards for communicating and teaching actionable lessons?
Re: Ask HN: What are the best MOOCs you've taken?
#297Fundamentals of Operations Research by G Srinivasan.
https://medium.com/@jossctz/google-kubernetes-engine-default...
It is a great course for non management majors to get a sense about how operations work. In fact, it is meant for non-management students because the course is originally taught at an engineering institute.
The instructor is a great figure in Operations Research. He is exceptionally knowledgeable and more importantly, clear.
Re: Ask HN: What are the best MOOCs you've taken?
#298If someone likes to rip all the links from this wonderful discussion, please use this script and paste it in browser console.
https://gist.github.com/mohanmca/481056956ca618a3b21a2b3a0d1...
Re: Ask HN: What are the best MOOCs you've taken?
#299Model 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 a…
Absolutely, this was one of the better courses I've taken. My only wish would be to have the course expand and include models from says physics or chemistry, just so that students could get a feel for how both quantitative and qualitative models can both be useful.
Re: Ask HN: What are the best MOOCs you've taken?
#300These courses are for beginners, but I started with what I learned from a few courses in Coursera and turned it into a career as a software engineer. https://www.coursera.org/learn/learn-to-program and https://www.coursera.org/learn/program-code from Jennifer Campbell and Paul Gries from the University of Toronto laid a great foundation to build on. I think I took them the first time they offered it and I still don't…
how did you turn it into a career?
I extracted everything I could from those courses, which served as a basic comp sci foundation, saw that I was pretty good at it, took a few more not-as-important courses, then applied to a challenging coding bootcamp. I passed the coding tests, got in, worked and learned the hardest I have ever done so before for a few months, and continued studying on my own for a couple months. Then I applied for a job that required a practical coding test, knew someone at the company so they would at least give me a chance, and crushed the coding challenge. I was almost optimally prepared for the job and hit the ground running, while having no official credentials. It's been great since then. The only drawback is that I don't have the broad depth of knowledge/experience that I imagine can come from a CS degree. So I am planning on getting a masters.