
Ask HN: Can we build a web dev school from free content? - abbasmehdi
I was recently talking to my little cousin who is contemplating what to major in college. At some point during our conversation it occurred to me that in order to learn web development from the bottom up one does not really need to go to university and get a "degree". All the knowledge and information required exists for free online. The only problem seems to be that it lacks the hand holding and curation of a structured university program. Do you think it's possible to put together a syllabus linked to free content online that might take a high schooler and turn them into a well rounded web developer? Do you think we can curate a set of lessons and tests to serve this purpose?
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vga15
As others have stated, most devs have gotten a large chunk of their knowledge
from the web. Google is their school.

 _However_ , I believe you were asking about those that want a more
'structured' university-like approach. Although these exist, I'd certainly say
there's room for the 'google of education', or the 'wikipedia of programming'
etc.

The most VITAL factor for structured learning is the result at the end. How
will the world know that I'm any better than when I'd started? Any
organization that can serve as a single authoritative credential node, to be
referenced in my bio, would certainly be sought after. Much like the MCP,
Cisco certifications etc.

I'd imagine an initiative quite like stanford giving out certificates for its
AI (&other) online classes, would be interesting. Or perhaps similar to paul
wilmott's CQF certification for quants.

\-----

To sum it up, there's tons of free content that can be used. What's
_important_ is structure, and being an authoritative, well-respected provider
of credentials. Also, the organization should have strong credentials
themselves, and build awareness constantly. Tests would certainly feature
heavily in the process. They could leverage startups and other universities to
get there quicker~

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hv23
We're working on the content curation problem @ Polymath--
<http://www.whatispolymath.com>. We have a short video up explaining our
approach, and should have a beta out soon. All feedback welcome!

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stc
I think you absolutely can. I am actually paying off the debt I incurred while
attending a four year college with development skills I have picked up from
mostly online resources, some in person classes/lectures, and a handful of
oreilly books. I am also working on a tool to help myself track my own
learnings and am trying to think of ways to turn it into a roadmap other
people can use which seems to be in the area of what you are referring too. I
have a rough working version here <http://courseslate.com> .

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dreamdu5t
Are you joking? Every web developer I work with was self-taught using the web.
Every programmer I've worked with depends greatly on free information and
documentation found through Google.

The easiest way to teach yourself is to BUILD SOMETHING and figure it out as
you go along. Don't worry about what to learn, just go do something and when
you run into a roadblock then seek out the answer. Repeat until you're
skilled.

~~~
abbasmehdi
I am talking about university-replacing, curauted list of courses and
subjects. Every web developer you know went to university. They have that
base. Im talking about high school kids.

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arkitaip
Sure you can, thousands of others have. Collecting a bunch of links is the
easy part, creating the learning platform is not. To understand how difficult
and resource intensive this is, check out MIT OpenCourseWare: despite massive
resources, most of the courses suck as they are nothing more than online
repositories for slides and other assets.

~~~
sixtofour
This has been my experience with MIT OCW too. Or trying to figure out which
textbook version applies to the course version that's online as opposed to the
current registered class.

It's been awhile since I made an attempt, but at the time I thought it could
use a little attention.

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Joakal
HN favourite this month: <http://www.codecademy.com/>

One of the oldest website: <http://www.w3schools.com/> However, they're not
always good according to this interventionist website: <http://w3fools.com/>

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anthony_franco
I haven't seen a solution to that problem, yet. Closest I've seen is this
site: <http://whatispolymath.com/>

