Live data from Hacker News

Learn programming in 12 Weeks from my couch? Legit?

makersacademy.com

11–20 of 21 posts

Re: Learn programming in 12 Weeks from my couch? Legit?

#12
post #9

It's not that cheap. Maybe it's easier (and free as well) just to learn those things by yourself.

Some of the best coders in the world have taught themselves - but just as many (if not more) have failed because of the inefficiency of trying to learn something you know absolutely nothing about. Should beginners start with Objective-C? If they're completely new, there's no way to know where to start.

I can't disagree with that, but being from the self-taught category myself, I would probably recommend to try learning stuff by yourself at first. A good coder has to be a fast and independent learner anyways. So, if one can't master something alone maybe programming is just not for him/her.

Re: Learn programming in 12 Weeks from my couch? Legit?

#13
post #9

It's not that cheap. Maybe it's easier (and free as well) just to learn those things by yourself.

I think the fundamental question is whether you have the self discipline to do the work by yourself. If you are highly self disciplined, and a self starter, then there are a lot of good quality, free options, like Coursera, Udacity, MIT's OpenCourseware, etc.

If you need an external push, like knowing that you've spent a lot of money on a course, then this may be for you, although it seems like a lot of money to me.

Re: Learn programming in 12 Weeks from my couch? Legit?

#14
Take this one instead: "Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years". The quickies can teach basics needed to make calculators or some utility scripts even in one week. That's ok, if you only need to do some simple stuff every now and then, but to learn how thing really work, where to optimize and how to design programs structure, you have to code for years with different languages, types of programs and environments.

Re: Learn programming in 12 Weeks from my couch? Legit?

#15
post #13
post #9

It's not that cheap. Maybe it's easier (and free as well) just to learn those things by yourself.

I think the fundamental question is whether you have the self discipline to do the work by yourself. If you are highly self disciplined, and a self starter, then there are a lot of good quality, free options, like Coursera, Udacity, MIT's OpenCourseware, etc. If you need an external push, like knowing that you've spent a lot of money on a course, then this may be for you, although it seems like a lot of money to me.

Completely agree with that.

Re: Learn programming in 12 Weeks from my couch? Legit?

#19
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of the best coders in the world have taught themselves - but just as many (if not more) have failed because of the inefficiency of trying to learn something you know absolutely nothing about. Should beginners start with Objective-C? If they're completely new, there's no way to know where to start.

I can't disagree with that, but being from the self-taught category myself, I would probably recommend to try learning stuff by yourself at first. A good coder has to be a fast and independent learner anyways. So, if one can't master something alone maybe programming is just not for him/her.

Agreed, I'm in the same boat as you and I think it's good that there's a bit of natural selection with developers.

That said, the UK definitely needs more people who can code.

Re: Learn programming in 12 Weeks from my couch? Legit?

#20
post #7

Might be legit, but is that tuition justified? As an "external", not having a job in coding but with coding skills, the only way I see worth paying that kind of money is if "graduating" gives very high chances to land a position (high= >80%).

I sat in on a graduation ceremony at Maker's Academy. I was extremely sceptical at first. The quality of the projects they'd produced in just a week (after having only spent 11 weeks learning to code) was surprisingly high. Having talked to the graduates and the instructors it's pretty obvious they're teaching people to code rather than teaching people rails.

If we were looking for junior developers I'd definitely be looking at the guys that come out of this.

Post reply on HN