The internet is full of Hello World examples, there is an abundance of documentation and example projects on GitHub, thousands of development blogs/networks like dev.to and you can learn anything from YouTube.
On the other side of the spectrum there are online courses on sites like udemy that you do pay for. These platforms hand out a certificate when you completed a course. You can also buy books and/or ebooks.
Do you pay for knowledge? Do you ever buy (e)books or spend money on a course? Was this a good investment or did you waste your money? What makes/made you decide to give it a try? Do you recommend it to others? What is your story?
Thanks.
Top comments (17)
I've bought many courses in the past and it is usually after getting a preview, or some free chapters. One recent example was Miguel Grinberg's excellent Flask Mega Tutorial. He was basically publishing the chapters every week for free on his blog, and the content was so good that I went and bought the whole course. This was not only to have it in advance but also to support his work and (hopefully) motivate him to do more.
I am not a big fan of video courses, but that is a personal preference and I did find some I loved and would pay for (CS50X, for example, but they are free). I will always go for a text-based than a video-based course. Just gives me more freedom to define my own pace and order.
I agree with looking for the samples or previews of courses! I do that as well for books before I decide to buy. It gives a good insight into if the content is worth purchasing or not. Especially when courses and books can be very pricey at times.
+1 for CS50,
My company pays for our PluralSight and requires a certain amount of time in that and also QuickHelp. As a dev, that time is flexible but for employees, QuickHelp is becoming a must. We can't live in a world where people can't save files or login. Where they can't navigate through Word or sort their own emails in Outlook.
Personally, I've gone back to buying my programming books. I love books for fun on my Kindle. I like to read easy books, wasting a few hours with a drink in hand. For me, though, I need dedicated time away from computer for reading seriously. I need the physical touch of a book when I'm learning.
I also, personally, keep an eye on Udemy. Even though I have and had access to PluralSight, the first teacher that really broke down .NET for me in a way I quickly understood was on Udemy. After him, I made my first app, gained confidence and really considered .NET as a path.
I spend money on Udemy courses, ebooks, and physical books all the time. I like free content too but you knows whats better than just free or paid content? All of the content. The stuff you can learn from a $10 Udemy course can bring 1000x ROI because you're investing in yourself knowledge you might keep with you for a very long time.
In my experience books tend to contain old, opinionated and very specific knowledge, i.e. be at most good for "copy & pasting" in case you happen to be building something exactly like the author was, instead of teaching how to get real skills and apply the skills. Courses might be useful for some things, but I've not had a situation where their generally exorbitant pricing would've been acceptable.
Yes I have personal memberships to Tuts+ and Udemy and regularly look at tutorials and courses on there (Tuts+ more so than Udemy). Tuts+ membership also gives me a number of free ebooks per month.
Yes I think its value for money, particularly when a Udemy course is on sale / promo which seems to be fairly regularly. They are a bit pricey otherwise.
I think wanting to find a course about a particular thing let to me finding these sites.
Like the others, my answer is yes.
In general books or paid tutorials get more in depth with certain subjects (I really 'digg' the ones that are using practical examples).
Not all of them are good, and in some cases you're better serviced by free resources (I still remember fondly Symfony 1's Jobeet) .
As an alternative, I really like initiatives of paying contributors to open source projects like Chris Fritz
No, I don't - it's amazing what you can find for free! Also, free courses often require you to figure more out yourself, which is a valuable skill (and none of that 'live help'stuff, you have to do networking yourself 😜)
Thanks for your response. I really like how the responses are all over the place.
I've never bought an online course or eBook. Though I have admittedly pirated things in the past like the Gnomon Workshop to learn 3D, and if I had the money to spend at the time, I definitely would have bought it. It helped me learn skills rapidly and efficiently, at a greater pace than browsing free tutorials on CGSociety was taking me. But I also found a great free tutorial series on another website that I preferred over the paid Gnomon DVDs, so it really depends.
There are plenty of free resources that can get you pretty far into your personal edification. The problem is finding the resources, and from an author you can understand. Then once you're skilled enough, the problem becomes finding specific resources to expand your knowledge.
You can always just hammer at things yourself, dissect documentation and application code, but sometimes it's easier to learn from someone who's done the dirty work.
Hi Jochem,
The answer is yes and yes but I have learned that some resources are better than others. Udemy has some great courses particularly the bleeding edge tech ones and instructors like Stephen Grider, Maximilian Schwarzmüller and Anthony Alices.
For anybody looking at Javascript and frontend in general it is very had to find anything better than Frontend Masters and they are having a week long freeby at
if anybody is interested, check out Kyle Simpsons courses and Jafar Husain in particular but these guys set the standards for training in general to be honest.
The last development book I think I bought was the Javascript for Dummies reference (the one with the spiral binding so you could lay it flat on your desk) sometime around the turn of the century.
I have inherited a bunch of books I'll probably never read but like the look of on my shelf.
I have paid for a humble bundle of ebooks once (I think). I think I may have paid for a cheap ebook or two by someone I know out of a feeling of giving general support.
Other than that, no. The sources you described (especially YouTube) are very good for skimming and for deeper learning for everything I've needed, but the killer reason is that if the official documentation is that sub-par that I can't get what I want, well, I'm just going to learn something else instead.