All Pluralsight videos are free for the month of April

#1

Post by nreece » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 2:51 PM UTC

All Pluralsight videos are free for the month of April
pluralsight.com

Re: All Pluralsight videos are free for the month of April

#2

Post by flanbiscuit » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 4:13 PM UTC

I've never used Pluralsight, does anyone have any CS related recommendations?

Does Pluralsight vet their content? Or is it a YouTube style free for all?

Re: All Pluralsight videos are free for the month of April

#3

Post by Parazitull » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 4:25 PM UTC

flanbiscuit wrote: post #2

I've never used Pluralsight, does anyone have any CS related recommendations? Does Pluralsight vet their content? Or is it a YouTube style free for all?

The content seems pretty vetted.

When I used it to learn .net mvc, the course was pretty well produced and structured.

Also, if I remember correctly, Troy Hunt had a web security course on the site.

Re: All Pluralsight videos are free for the month of April

#4

Post by runevault » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 4:26 PM UTC

flanbiscuit wrote: post #2

I've never used Pluralsight, does anyone have any CS related recommendations? Does Pluralsight vet their content? Or is it a YouTube style free for all?

Their content is vetted. Having taken 50+ hours worth of content over the years, everything has been at least good.

And I'm not sure how much CS content they have, the stuff I've seen tends to be more "how to use language/tool x"

Re: All Pluralsight videos are free for the month of April

#5

Post by mongol » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 4:45 PM UTC

flanbiscuit wrote: post #2

I've never used Pluralsight, does anyone have any CS related recommendations? Does Pluralsight vet their content? Or is it a YouTube style free for all?

It is not a really a replacement for a CS university education. But good training on various computer languages, frameworks, tools.

Re: All Pluralsight videos are free for the month of April

#6

Post by wenc » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 4:47 PM UTC

flanbiscuit wrote: post #2

I've never used Pluralsight, does anyone have any CS related recommendations? Does Pluralsight vet their content? Or is it a YouTube style free for all?

If you work with a Microsoft stack, Pluralsight is one of the best resources out there for rapid learning. The content is highly curated and the pedagogical quality is high. (another comment mentions that instructors have to audition: maybe this is why. Other platforms like Udemy are hit or miss.)

So I usually work on backend stuff (Linux) but some time ago I was tasked with writing an app with a complex UI in C#/.NET, which I had no prior experience with. I tried reading books but it was slow-going, because the Visual Studio environment is just that: visual, with lots of clicking on the screen.

I randomly stumbled upon Pluralsight's C# course (a limited Pluralsight subscription is bundled with every MSDN subscription): it was amazing. Screencasts made so much more sense than PDFs for something like Visual Studio. I found myself productive in C#/Visual Studio in just 2 weeks (caveat: I have a 15 yr programming background, just not in C#), and it took me another 2 weeks to finish the product. I breezed through courses in ASP.NET Core as well, and I'm now productive in that environment too. (As a Python veteran, I have to grudgingly confess that developing webapps in a statically typed language is so much more convenient and so much less error prone than in a dynamic one. Flask is a mess... a workable mess, but a mess nonetheless)

I don't know how polished their non-Microsoft materials are, but almost any course I've encountered on Microsoft-related technologies have been excellent. I'd especially recommend them to folks who don't really care to work with Microsoft tech (though C# is a truly pleasant language to work with -- designed by Anders Hejlsberg of Turbo Pascal and Delphi fame), but find themselves having to -- these courses will get you productive in no time. They're like a compressed signal to the brain.

Re: All Pluralsight videos are free for the month of April

#7

Post by cheschire » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 4:48 PM UTC

flanbiscuit wrote: post #2

I've never used Pluralsight, does anyone have any CS related recommendations? Does Pluralsight vet their content? Or is it a YouTube style free for all?

Instructors for Pluralsight have to audition[0].

I bootstrapped my C# knowledge into a programming career entirely off of Scott Allen's MVC 3 videos back in 2011/2012. He took the time to not just follow the project templates, but to start from empty projects and explain step by step what MVC's plumbing was doing. It was hugely eye opening and really removed a lot of the man-behind-the-curtain feeling of how that framework functions.

John Papa's videos also helped me understand a few new design patterns I'd never used, such as Unit Of Work and repositories. Even if you don't use those things, it's awesome to be able to recognize the pattern with others use them.

They went through a few expansion phases and merged / bought a couple other training companies into them, and their content really took off after that.

Now they have some great automated assessment programs that help focus your learning onto different tracks[1].

I haven't used their product in a couple years now as I've shifted into management and my organization has a lot of internal management training courses that will keep me busy for years. Still though, Pluralsight is where I go back to when I want to pick up a new specialist skill.

0: https://www.pluralsight.com/teach

1: https://www.pluralsight.com/product/skills

Re: All Pluralsight videos are free for the month of April

#8

Post by iso1631 » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 4:51 PM UTC

I've done some really good course on pluralsight (we had some form of enterprise license for a year), but other courses I've had to give up because of the grating accent of the person giving the course

Re: All Pluralsight videos are free for the month of April

#9

Post by thinkmassive » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 4:54 PM UTC

flanbiscuit wrote: post #2

I've never used Pluralsight, does anyone have any CS related recommendations? Does Pluralsight vet their content? Or is it a YouTube style free for all?

Heh, I probably would have said "Udemy style free for all" but the point is basically the same.

According to my email I signed up for a free trial a couple years ago, then closed my account when the trial ended. I don't recall the exact course(s) I tried, but in general they seemed like higher quality than the typical distance learning factories.

I know Nigel Poulton has some courses there on Kubernetes and Docker. Based on his books, and the audio adaptations of them, I expect his Pluralsight courses to be of high quality.

Re: All Pluralsight videos are free for the month of April

#10

Post by Red-Ted » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 5:09 PM UTC

iso1631 wrote: post #8

I've done some really good course on pluralsight (we had some form of enterprise license for a year), but other courses I've had to give up because of the grating accent of the person giving the course

Thick Indian accents? There are some fantastic programming tutorials on YouTube but unfortuantly the thick Indian accent makes them all most unwatchable.