Most of the time, you don’t really need another MOOC • Hacker News Board

Re: Most of the time, you don’t really need another MOOC

#91

Post by compacct27 » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 8:45 PM UTC

omarhaneef wrote: post #87

compacct27 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thankfully, mine's been the opposite. Idk your situation, but I had a well-defined project in hand before I found him. I had done some work on it already, even. When I took him on, my flow's been this: I do as much work as I can, get stuck, then he's there to pull me out of the mess I made. I learn a ton along the way, and he'll point out topics for me to research on my own. 10 hours is a large chunk, but it's lasted…

Interesting. So you don't sit with him 10 hours at a time. You have him -- more or less -- on call when you get stuck for 30 minutes at a time? Or do you batch all the roadblocks you have, then ask him to schedule something at, say 10am, the next day. He looks at your git repo and the issues you have?

Oh for sure, I chunked out my payment essentially. Our calls last about an hour at a time, and yeah, I batch all my roadblocks. It's easy to have big c++ roadblocks that take a while to debug and explain, so it's a great fit. We jump on Zoom and screenshare, but he'll look at my github separately sometimes

Re: Most of the time, you don’t really need another MOOC

#92

Post by loosetypes » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 8:48 PM UTC

bdcravens wrote: post #61

compacct27 wrote: post #53

Anyone who's professionally coding right now has one super-effective option that's rarely talked about: Hire someone knowledgeable to walk you through what you're learning. I've been doing a heavy C++ project, and as a web developer, I was basically a walking footgun. I realized this early on, hired a total expert in the field (the guy has contributed to C++ standards committees before), and am Loving how smoothly th…

Codementor.io is good for this. (most there are in the $60-100/hour range, and you can work in as small as 15 minute intervals)

Oh wow, this could be interesting for discussing system architecture or database schema designs before committing a large chunk of time to an implementating a solo project.

If it’s something you’ll spend a significant amount of time building that could be well worth the price.

Re: Most of the time, you don’t really need another MOOC

#93

Post by calebkaiser » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 9:02 PM UTC

In my personal experience, this isn't a question of either/or, it's a question of order. That is, courses are fantastic, but most of the time, they're more beneficial after you've done some JIT learning.

Fastai, who in my opinion create the best educational resources in the deep learning space, are a great example of this. They use a metaphor involving sports to explain their approach. You don't learn to play a sport by pouring over rulebooks and studying professionals—you start playing. However, as you get a feel for the sport, you then find yourself in a position where learning a lot more about the theory of the game would make a huge difference to you, and that's where courses come in. Similarly, they get you off the ground quickly with some basic intuitions around deep learning, give you a sandbox to do some JIT learning, and then begin layering in deeper concepts.

I've had similar experiences in my life, where taking graduate level courses was incredibly rewarding specifically in areas where I'd already spent a decent amount of time doing JIT learning—and arguably, where I'd reached a relative limit in how far JIT would take me.

Re: Most of the time, you don’t really need another MOOC

#94

Post by dimmke » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 9:11 PM UTC

I love the concept of "Just-in-time learning". I think it applies to other things too.

In my personal life is when I am working on a large scope project, I tend to try to anticipate every single thing that I will have to do up front. But I've found I always miss something or misunderstand a requirement. It's way more efficient to just do things as they come up, and I'm trying to switch to that method more often.

I definitely relate to taking some kind of programming related course and they teach you about something you will never use, that people rarely use in real world scenarios, but there's still a pressure to make sure I fully understand it.

Re: Most of the time, you don’t really need another MOOC

#95

Post by someday_somehow » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 9:24 PM UTC

I spent over a 100 hours working through MOOCs and video tutorials over the past month only to find out that all I would learn at the end would be the basics that wouldn't really be help if someone asked me to 'go build'. I'd have the same feeling even after completing an advanced level course.

What we need are technical MOOCs that discuss what decisions to make when approaching a problem, evaluating trade-offs, what are the common practices you'd come across in a production environment and where the concept you learned fits in the big picture.

I haven't found any MOOC that talks about the above in depth for web dev and the only youtuber I found who talks about this is TechLead but he mostly puts out 10 minute clips instead of complete tutorials.

I've gone back to books and I'm learning much more per time spent studying something.

Re: Most of the time, you don’t really need another MOOC

#96

Post by master_yoda_1 » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 9:27 PM UTC

I agree we have thousand of very basic machine learning moocs now a days. people are wasting lots of time on them.

Re: Most of the time, you don’t really need another MOOC

#97

Post by spitfire » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 9:29 PM UTC

someday_somehow wrote: post #95

I spent over a 100 hours working through MOOCs and video tutorials over the past month only to find out that all I would learn at the end would be the basics that wouldn't really be help if someone asked me to 'go build'. I'd have the same feeling even after completing an advanced level course. What we need are technical MOOCs that discuss what decisions to make when approaching a problem, evaluating trade-offs, what…

I thought tech lead was a satire (as a millionaire).

Practical application is an area I've always thought was sorely lacking. There's lots of places to learn the theory, but I still don't get it until I understand the applications. Then I start to get a fingertip feel (Fingerspitzengefuhl if you want to come from a certain view).

Whenever I see "Application is left as an exercise for the reader", I read that as "I don't actually understand the subject well enough to teach it fully".

Re: Most of the time, you don’t really need another MOOC

#98

Post by vxNsr » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 9:33 PM UTC

parenthesis wrote: post #33

robbyking wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anything that I haven't kept practicing is almost gone. I think that's true of any method of learning. I once took a class on a proprietary audio visual language, and a year of so later my manager asked me to write some control software using that language, and I basically had to start from scratch. On the other hand, I took Stanford's first MOOC Swift Class, and have been using Swift as my primary language ever si…

I find the learning something again for the second (or nth) time is at least easier than it was the first time.

Very much this. I'll take MOOCS read an article and then feel like I forgot everything only to have a much easier time "learning" it the second time when it becomes practical.

Re: Most of the time, you don’t really need another MOOC

#99

Post by vxNsr » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 9:37 PM UTC

MauranKilom wrote: post #50

> "Doing that MOOC/Masters gives me a certificate that helps my resume." I have to mirror an observation I've read on here that matches my retrospective view: Job applicants with multiple online course certificates tend to do poorly in technical interviews. This may in part be a failing of our education systems. "Be taught about something -> write test -> pass/no pass" is usually all there is, and this system of how…

This is interesting in that you're advocating for a lot more CE than many other fields require or look for. More and more it's becoming apparent that CS needs a standards body and a more structured learning process. As many people feel that no matter how much extra time they put in it's not enough.

Re: Most of the time, you don’t really need another MOOC

#100

Post by lrossi » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 9:39 PM UTC

compacct27 wrote: post #79

squeaky-clean wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like this idea, obviously I couldn't afford it for every thing I want to learn, but there are some topics where I can't really find quality tutorials/MOOCs/whatever and would be willing to pay to learn. How would one go about doing this? Was that person listing their mentoring services somewhere, or did you contact them directly?

I made a post on the C++ subreddit (r/cpp) asking for a mentor. Talked about the project and said I was willing to pay. Some people pointed me towards others (those people were too busy), but one guy reached out and had an online presence I could check out before deciding. The mods removed my post btw :/ apparently it was against the subreddit rules to ask for help. Found the guy before they could remove my post thou…

Reddit is overly moderated, to the point that many communities do not seem friendly at all. The programming ones are a mixed bag. But others are worse. I was browsing recently a medical subreddit which was a support forum for a certain class of diseases, and people were using codewords to refer to banned names of various medical problems, to avoid having their posts deleted. It was ridiculous.

For programming/tech related topics, I no longer use reddit these days, instead just read HN and some blogs. The community is nicer here.