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Ask HN: Which courses (online or not) have had the greatest impact on you?

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Re: Ask HN: Which courses (online or not) have had the greatest impact on you?

#21

Post by llanowarelves »

dingosity wrote: post #15

Go ahead and down-vote me now, I'm going to criticize academia here. The question was "which courses have had the greatest impact on you?" and not "which courses have had the greatest POSITIVE impact on you?" I am sad to say my junior year honors literature course had the most impact on my career. One of the assignments was an analysis of one or two Matthew Arnold works (Matthew Arnold's a 19th century poet & critic…

Academics can be maybe the largest class of midwits. (This doesn't apply to people like Chomsky, he's a couple standard deviations higher).

As a high-school Valedictorian, I too was set up to do very well in academia, but could tell it would be too hostile and backwards from what I wanted. You're expected to be way too submissive and highly discouraged from original/independent/unpopular thought that conflicts with those already invested. I was excited to get to "real education" after conforming to high school but the rules only tighten, and it's 100x hyper-political.

So I skipped it, self-taught, and started stacking money. No use in casting pearls before swine and try to "fix the system" (and likely just be sacrificed to it, like Semmelweis). To the people trying to fix problems, thank you for choosing to be the martyrs so I don't have to; on the other hand, Max Planck had the right attitude when he said things advance via funerals, so why let it be your funeral?

Academics are good for bagging my groceries and delivering my pizza though, so I am grateful for their contributions. (I'm dunking on them here in jest, but PhDs -- pizza handling and delivery -- are above midwits but just often grossly misapply efforts. Sad to see).

Re: Ask HN: Which courses (online or not) have had the greatest impact on you?

#22

Post by debanjan16 »

Snoddas wrote: post #20

In 92 I took a class that focused on "The theory of programming languages" It was one of the first classes I took (Master Programme in Computer Science) I think it's instrumental in my ease of reading and understanding code bases in new languages.

Which book was used?

Re: Ask HN: Which courses (online or not) have had the greatest impact on you?

#23

Post by sul_tasto »

sockaddr wrote: post #19
dingosity wrote: post #15

Go ahead and down-vote me now, I'm going to criticize academia here. The question was "which courses have had the greatest impact on you?" and not "which courses have had the greatest POSITIVE impact on you?" I am sad to say my junior year honors literature course had the most impact on my career. One of the assignments was an analysis of one or two Matthew Arnold works (Matthew Arnold's a 19th century poet & critic…

Since this prof was accusing you of plagiarism I think you could have appealed this and taken the case to your department’s head of the dean, why didn’t you do that? I have a feeling that if you articulated your case well enough the prof would have eventually dropped the issue. I have to say, this seems like it’s mostly on you not defending yourself. Sure the professor was wrong and being an ignorant ass but you shou…

You’re right, of coarse, but at that age it wouldn’t have occurred to me to go to the dean. Students are used to the teachers having all the power. My high school junior is still told where she has to sit in class. It’s ridiculous.

Re: Ask HN: Which courses (online or not) have had the greatest impact on you?

#24

Post by taffronaut »

I was lucky to attend a series of jazz workshops by Conrad Cork at the start of my playing career. Conrad authored "Harmony with LEGO Bricks"[1] approach to jazz improvisation and used the workshops to test his teaching technique on live subjects at the college where I was working. In a nutshell the approach links listening, understanding and improvising. The book is pretty dense, and I feel very grateful to have had the benefit of the author explaining it to me.

I play jazz as a semi-pro but have backed some pretty hardcore players from time to time. Conrad sadly died in 2021[2] but I've had decades of benefit in terms of confidence on the bandstand from that course.

[1] https://jaelliott24.wordpress.com/2021/09/21/harmony-with-le...

[2] https://londonjazznews.com/2021/05/18/obituary-conrad-cork-1...

Re: Ask HN: Which courses (online or not) have had the greatest impact on you?

#25

Post by Snacklive »

havan_agrawal wrote: post #14

"Learning How to Learn" BY Dr. Barbara Oakley really changed my perspective towards learning in my late 20s. I was starting to feel (of my own accord) that I was starting to lose/had already lost the cognitive function needed to learn as intensely as I had during my undergrad years. This course flipped that idea on its head, and gave me the tools and mental model to pick up learning new (and hard) things again. Stron…

Do you have a link ?

Re: Ask HN: Which courses (online or not) have had the greatest impact on you?

#26

Post by kennethologist »

Snacklive wrote: post #25
havan_agrawal wrote: post #14

"Learning How to Learn" BY Dr. Barbara Oakley really changed my perspective towards learning in my late 20s. I was starting to feel (of my own accord) that I was starting to lose/had already lost the cognitive function needed to learn as intensely as I had during my undergrad years. This course flipped that idea on its head, and gave me the tools and mental model to pick up learning new (and hard) things again. Stron…

Do you have a link ?

https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn

Re: Ask HN: Which courses (online or not) have had the greatest impact on you?

#27

Post by Dowwie »

grepLeigh wrote: post #6

MITx had a profound impact on my life when the platform launched in 2011. Ditto edX.org in 2012. At the time, I was a college dropout. My job history looked like: self-employed, Starbucks, and a bunch of catering per diem gigs. I didn't know what a "software engineer" did, although I had a vague desire to make video games (but no idea how). I was technical enough to install WordPress with Cpanel and resell hosting to…

The millions of people who took a similar route and didn't become millionaires would like to point out that this story is exceptional, as in well above average, extraordinary and very uncommon. Congrats on thus far making the most of your life and abilities, though.

Re: Ask HN: Which courses (online or not) have had the greatest impact on you?

#28

Post by throw_away1525 »

sul_tasto wrote: post #23
sockaddr wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since this prof was accusing you of plagiarism I think you could have appealed this and taken the case to your department’s head of the dean, why didn’t you do that? I have a feeling that if you articulated your case well enough the prof would have eventually dropped the issue. I have to say, this seems like it’s mostly on you not defending yourself. Sure the professor was wrong and being an ignorant ass but you shou…

You’re right, of coarse, but at that age it wouldn’t have occurred to me to go to the dean. Students are used to the teachers having all the power. My high school junior is still told where she has to sit in class. It’s ridiculous.

He's not right, he's just victim blaming. It's not reasonable to expect college students who are barely adults to have to defend themselves against abusive professors who have a position of power over them.

Re: Ask HN: Which courses (online or not) have had the greatest impact on you?

#29

Post by JauntTrooper »

Intro to Financial Markets, taught by Burton Malkiel.

As an impressionable 20 year old with no background in finance, it introduced me to passive investing, Vanguard, the efficient market theory and the power of compound interest.

It's funny, 20+ years later I still think back to some specific lectures in his class whenever I encounter the CAPM or Black-Scholes in my day job. Prof. Malkiel helped me develop a healthy skepticism about claims in finance that has served me really well in my career and my personal finances.

Re: Ask HN: Which courses (online or not) have had the greatest impact on you?

#30

Post by beezlebroxxxxxx »

This might not be super to HN's tastes, but during my undergrad I took 2 literature classes that had an enormous impact on my worldview.

The first was a year long British Literature seminar. The professor, Siobhain Bly Calkin, was a brilliant teacher and lecturer. The course was nominally about British literature, but she made the course an incredible historical walk through British history and the history of religion in Europe. Her explanations of religious debates, and the royal bloodline feuds and twists of fate, radically shifted how I viewed European history and how people lived in Europe and the British Isles before the modern age. I've found history classes in general to have an enormous impact on my worldview.

The second was a year long seminar on Modernist Literature. The professor, Dana Dragumoiu, was not the best lecturer, but she was a brilliant scholar and had almost unreasonably high expectations for everyone in the class. Everyone got Cs and Ds on their first essay, which came to a shock to many, but then she methodically worked with us to improve our arguments and writing skills. It felt like learning to read all over again. She taught me, and my fellow classmates, to exceed the minimum and to excel through hard work, she believed in us in a way that is very rare in academia (she considered us as adults) and I can attest that it was very satisfying.

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