
Ask HN: Best paid courses you've taken? - selleck
For 2020 I&#x27;ve decided to focus on taking online courses to further my education. With that, I have a rough budget of $50&#x2F;month to spend. Looking for suggestions on paid or free courses you may have taken that you found beneficial.<p>edit: 2020, not 2019
======
otras
I haven't taken any paid online courses that fit within your budget, but there
are plenty of high quality free courses. Depending on your experience, I'd
recommend the following:

\- Coursera Learning How To Learn: [https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-
how-to-learn](https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn)

\- Harvard's Online CS50:
[https://cs50.harvard.edu/college/2020/spring/](https://cs50.harvard.edu/college/2020/spring/)

\- MIT's Introduction to Computer Science and Programming Using Python:
[https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-to-computer-
science-...](https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-to-computer-science-and-
programming-7)

\- MIT's algorithms course: [https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-
engineering-and-compu...](https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-
and-computer-science/6-006-introduction-to-algorithms-fall-2011/)

\- MIT's distributed systems course (going on now):
[https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.824/](https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.824/)

All of the above have high quality video lectures and assignments to work on
to get some practice with the concepts.

~~~
BossingAround
Highly unpopular opinion, I know, but I didn't find learning how to learn very
useful. It might as well have been a 30-minute video, and it wouldn't lose
much of its content. A lot of the content seems to be rather inspirational
than educational.

~~~
otras
Kind of like any book or course like that, I found that the magic wasn't in
watching the lectures or reading the book but in deliberately applying some of
the strategies to my own learning process.

It was easy to watch and think "OK that makes sense". It was much harder but
much more worthwhile to deliberately set aside time for diffuse mode, practice
spaced repetition, and quiz myself as I worked through a reading.

------
mindcrime
Depends on what your interests are. If I had exactly $50.00 /month to spend on
online education, I'd consider spending it on either a Coursera subscription
or a Linux Academy subscription. The latter is especially valuable if you're
interested more in "infrastructure" kind of stuff, and IT industry
certifications around things like Docker, Kubernetes, Linux, AWS, GCP, Azure,
etc. The former includes more of what you might call "theoretical" material
and has more focus on Data Science, Computer Science, Mathematics, etc. (among
many other subjects).

FWIW, I actually do maintain subscriptions to both Coursera and Linux Academy
and have found both valuable. On Coursera I have found value in Andrew Ng's ML
stuff, the Johns Hopkins sequence on Data Science, and the Duke sequence on
Statistics with R. I used Linux Academy to prep for my AWS Certified Solution
Architect certification, and am currently working on the Docker Certified
Associate and Certified Kubernetes Administrator certs.

~~~
zwayhowder
I self fund Linux Academy because the hands on labs make it much more useful
than many of the other options. While I do have my own home lab and cloud
accounts the LA setup makes it easy to pickup a course when I'm on the road
with just my work laptop.

I had pluralsight too but stopped when I realised I'd watched lots of videos
but not done many labs.

------
plinkplonk
There are a few courses on Edx (that I think) are worth paying for (under the
new scheme, where you can audit courses for free, but lose access to videos,
homework etc once the course is over). But, for such courses, edx also
requires uploading of a government issued photo id, which I have no intention
of doing.

If anyone at edx is reading this, I'll be glad to pay for retaining videos
beyond the course period, and the ability to do assignments, but I don't want
"verified certificates" (which presumably requires photo id etc). Right now
there is no way I can pay for the former without also asking for the latter.

~~~
jlelonm
Why are you against uploading your ID?

~~~
jholman
Not OP, but I don't trust startups to responsibly handle my PII. It's not a
good gamble, based on incentives, and also based on recorded history. They
usually don't encrypt it, they usually don't understand their own backup
system, they usually have employees who copy it as "sample data" or "seed
data" to developer laptops which are then stolen with some probability greater
than 1%, they usually don't delete data on a reasonable timeframe, etc etc
etc.

And it's one thing to have my email address, my phone number, etc. And if it
was just MINE, shrug. But if you're asking for mine, you're asking for that of
many people. And that means that criminals looking for PII for identity theft
will know to target you. Or hackers who accidentally steal my data will be
able to sell it as part of a bundle. Or it'll happen with your servers, at
auction, when you go under. Etc.

So if a service that I very much want to pay for requires me to scan and
upload ID, I dunno, maybe it's still worth it to me, but it just makes me so
uneasy that I just procrastinate until I forget. This has happened a number of
times.

If you're not the government, I want my business with you to be as anonymous
as possible, because frankly you're probably not a very good steward of my
privacy.

(Actually, I'm even more afraid of government IT, and I know my personal data
has been stolen from my federal government at least once, but I've got no
options on this one.)

~~~
redis_mlc
> I don't trust startups to responsibly handle my PII.

Smart, but:

Any web developer knows most uploads go to a folder on disk ... likely
readable by the web server process.

Harvest away!

~~~
jholman
That's a "but"? That sounds like you're agreeing!

------
atregir
I recently became interested in ML and started with THE course for having a
good intro into ML (Coursera's ML by Andrew Ng). That one is offered for free
on Coursera and you only pay if you really want to have the certificate once
you are done.

That course was so interesting to me and the way Andrew Ng explains - his
enthusiasm, his sincerity, the way he talks, his authority on the field mixed
with his unbelievable modesty - it is all a mix of things I love in a teacher.
He is so inspiring. So I continued.

I am about to finish the Deep Learning Specialization that has 5 courses and
my next one will be Tensorflow in Oractice.

I pay for a Coursera subscription (44 EUR/MO) and I am very very happy with
the quality of the courses I mentioned above.

When I was studying in depth regarding database development and performance
optimization (MSSQL mostly) I really really liked the courses on Pluralsight.

~~~
syrald
I am doing the ML course on Coursera as well, and it is clearly a must have if
you want to understand Machine Learning.

~~~
totaldude87
Just registered, thank you!

------
diehunde
I think O'reilly has one of the biggest catalogs for that budget:
[https://learning.oreilly.com/signup/](https://learning.oreilly.com/signup/)

You have access to hundreds of good quality books, learning courses,
conferences, etc.

Now, I've seen that for the best courses fos something in particular, you'll
find material from different sites, and buy them individually can get much
more expensive. I've seen good courses for specific topics from Linkedin
learning, others very good from educative.io and even others from packtpub so
it's a big decision just to go with one.

~~~
mtnGoat
I utilize this as well, have had a membership for almost a decade now. Great
resource!

------
Geeflow
I took "Become a Product Manager" ([https://www.udemy.com/course/become-a-
product-manager-learn-...](https://www.udemy.com/course/become-a-product-
manager-learn-the-skills-get-a-job/)) and was quite happy with it. The title
is a bit tacky - it is not instantly going to turn you into a product manager.
But it is a nice overview of the field.

I paid about 10 bucks during one of the countless sales. Never pay the full
price at Udemy. Their pricing policy is ridiculous. I feel like you only have
to wait a few days for the next 90%-off-discount to come along. I counted
three times during the past few weeks.

~~~
mindcrime
_I paid about 10 bucks during one of the countless sales. Never pay the full
price at Udemy. Their pricing policy is ridiculous. I feel like you only have
to wait a few days for the next 90%-off-discount to come along. I counted
three times during the past few weeks._

Second this. If you want to take a Udemy course and the listed price is more
than about $12.00, just wait. It'll be on sale for $9.99, $10.99, $11.99 or
something like that, within a couple of weeks. They're almost always running
various sales and promotions... just be patient.

------
thdn
Kubernetes - Ansible: [https://kodekloud.com](https://kodekloud.com)

Linux - DevOps:
[https://training.linuxfoundation.org](https://training.linuxfoundation.org)

AWS - DevOps: [https://acloud.guru](https://acloud.guru)

------
atRonan
Personally wanted to be able to generate ideas / prototypes quickly. Focusing
on learning Vue.js best decision I have so far made in 2020. Good learning
material is

[https://vueschool.io/courses/](https://vueschool.io/courses/)

------
cercatrova
Udemy was instrumental to helping me learn modern web development and switch
from backend to full-stack development. In particular, I liked Andrew Mead's
JS, React, GraphQL and Node courses.

------
wiseleo
[https://learn.tylermcginnis.com/](https://learn.tylermcginnis.com/) for
JavaScript. Pure gold. :)

------
ArtWomb
Currently paying C$30 per month to a Quebecois private French video tutor. And
it's literally the best thing ever. Unfortuneately I can't recomennd, it's a
personal connection. But I would try and find a mentor relationship in
sinmilar vein. We chat almost everyday. Enough to praticer mon francais bien
tot. Montreal is a hub of AI

Also current YC SUS Winter 2020 cohort. YC is magical. Its not just they
revolutionized seed stage in founders favor. Or give you the blueprint for
startup creation. It's the people YC attracts. The rational elite. Who don't
belong anyplace else

~~~
wdroz

        praticer mon francais bien tot
    

*pratiquer mon français bientôt

------
master_yoda_1
First try to read a book and if you find interesting only then spend money on
online courses. Most of the online courses are very basic and you won't learn
anything.

------
thorin
Piano lesson, for £25 pounds for 1-1.5hrs some stoner dude comes over to my
house usually once a week. He's a really good teacher and piano player!

~~~
person_of_color
I want to do this. Do you have a legit piano or keyboard?

------
BossingAround
I would recommend:

\- Pluralsight for dev-focused courses

\- Linux Academy for DevOps-focused courses

Also, save up for certs and do some certs. Kubernetes certs (CKA, CKD) seem to
be popular and difficult (which is great!), or there were some new-ish NodeJS
certs. I find certs really force me to learn something and not just scratch
the surface.

Just a suggestion. You can use Pluralsight and LinuxAcademy without the
intention to pass certs as well.

~~~
tamiral
I have both and I can't count how many times I need to understand something in
some detail and put on a course. I learned Jenkins from LinuxAcademy and
Devops principles, went on to build our jenkins server with all the jobs for
our builds/automated testing.

------
gesman
Splunk University. Happens once a year in Oct.

In 3 days you learn to build scalable business applications to work with any
data. Gold.

And tons more.

------
brentis
Loved it. Design thinking

[https://emeritus.org/management-certificate-
programs/innovat...](https://emeritus.org/management-certificate-
programs/innovation-design-thinking/)

------
Aperocky
Go suscribe to linkedin learning, I used to be on it before it was called
that, but it's worth every bit of that price. There are basically 10 courses
for everything you want to learn (until intermediate level, by which point you
probably should be learning by yourself while implementing). It's where I
started python.

Alternatively, you can just start implementing stuff in a language of choice,
if you have programming background this might be a much better way to learn,
not suggested for beginners to the entire concept of programming though.

------
rasikjain
Taken few courses related to AWS on AcloudGuru and Udemy.

For a crash course like ML, Photography, JS etc; Udemy is a great bargain for
$9.99

Tried pluralsight couple of years ago. I found content to be bit old and not
updated reqularly.

I have bookmarked below url containing list of courses offered by different
universities worldwide.

[https://qz.com/1437623/600-free-online-courses-you-can-
take-...](https://qz.com/1437623/600-free-online-courses-you-can-take-from-
universities-worldwide/)

------
DrNuke
Shameless plug (the ongoing content project in my profile): a tenner gets you
a kindle booklet with a summary of the most recent academic and industrial
trends for one of a number of general or applied subjects in the 2020s, each
booklet also with an executive summary to get up to date in half an hour plus
105 free internet references, explicitly linked for your own consultation, in
the case you want to go deeper.

------
runjake
Penetration Testing With Kali Linux by OffSec.com. Along with 90 days of lab.

Relatively cheap and a really deep, wide-ranging curriculum. And fun, to boot.

------
scotty82
Check out LinkedIn Learning, we've got technical courses at all levels, and a
bunch of other topics like creative stuff and professional skills as well. All
available as part of a monthly membership that's within your $50/mo budget
($29.99/mo or $19.99/mo depending on duration). Disclaimer: I work there,
creating some of the technical content.

~~~
Vomzor
Why is this downvoted? Linkedin learning is a rebrand of Lynda.com after
Linkedin bought it. Lynda.com was probably the first online course website
ever and has a lot of good material.

------
pretzell
I'd say you don't have to spend any money for some of the best classes, but it
matters what you're interested in / specialty. Check out OSSU on GitHub for a
lot of really good free courses. Only time I'd recommend spending money is if
there a specific course within a specialization

------
igotsideas
Linux academy for cloud was great. Frontend masters is really good for web
stuff. Pluralsight for c#/.net

------
mcintyre1994
I really like Wes Bos' courses, they cover full stack Javascript and some
other FE stuff if you're interested in that.
[https://wesbos.com/courses/](https://wesbos.com/courses/) is his list of
courses.

------
ptah
OSU series of permaculture courses will change your view of the world. start
with the free intro
[https://open.oregonstate.edu/courses/permaculture/](https://open.oregonstate.edu/courses/permaculture/)

------
AlchemistCamp
Spend $15 of it on Laracasts.

I don't even use PHP and it's still one of the highest ROI purchases I've
made. The videos on editors, tooling, Vue, and the ideas I can take from the
Laravel world into my Phoenix/Elixir world are well worth it.

Jeffrey Way is an incredible teacher!

------
chillytoes
Data Structures and Algorithms from UCSD on Coursera:
[https://www.coursera.org/specializations/data-structures-
alg...](https://www.coursera.org/specializations/data-structures-algorithms)

------
soukai
Salesforce and for free. I can even give you an online free course. Learn
Salesforce on trailhead.com. It gave me the opportunity to work on awesome
projects. Besides, this tech is so hyped on the market. Jump in the bandwagon!

------
codextremist
I strongly recommend [https://classpert.com](https://classpert.com) (specially
if you're on a budget), before you decide in which course you should enroll
yourself to

------
Antoninus
I paid for a year of text-based courses on
[https://www.educative.io/](https://www.educative.io/).

Definitely good value and they're always adding more content.

------
Shosty123
Bang-for-buck-wise it's an O'Reilly subscription hands down.

[https://learning.oreilly.com/signup/](https://learning.oreilly.com/signup/)

~~~
zwayhowder
You can save a few $$ by signing up for ACM instead.

[https://learning.acm.org/e-learning/oreilly](https://learning.acm.org/e-learning/oreilly)

~~~
rapfaria
Any subscription will do or do I have to get one with the "digital library"? I
think it's $198

~~~
miguendes
You can get the professional subscription for 99 USD.

[https://services.acm.org/public/qj/profqj/qjprof_control.cfm...](https://services.acm.org/public/qj/profqj/qjprof_control.cfm?promo=PWEBTOP&form_type=Professional)

------
a-saleh
Do you have a community, where you'd learn together?

I wonder if it weren't more efective to i.e. buy books and organize book-club
with your colleagues.

~~~
a-saleh
Our manager is running one right now, but he usually proposes books about
team-work, e.t.c.

Just finished 'Turning ship around', next on the list is probably 'The phoenix
project'

------
rayhendricks
Web development Bootcamp on udemy by Angela Yu. Only like $10-15 if they are
having a sale but it gets a basic understanding of dev in you head.

------
jmpman
I took one graduate level Database course almost 20 years ago. Have built my
entire career off that one course... and I only got a B.

------
112
If I had a $50/month budget, this is how I'd spread it:

    
    
      $10 - https://subscription.packtpub.com/
      Are you interested in frontend?
        $40 - https://frontendmasters.com/
      Otherwise
        $29 - https://www.pluralsight.com/
        $10 - go for a random course on something I've never done
    

Courses I've (extra)enjoyed:

    
    
      - 60% of Rust courses on Packt
      - https://mastery.games/p/flexbox-zombies
      - https://laracasts.com/series/learn-vue-2-step-by-step
    

Shoutout to Jeffrey from Laracasts, it's been years since I've taken his Vue
class, and I don't use Vue anymore, but the calm, straight-forward way he
explains things stuck in the back of my head. When I have to teach something,
I try to be Jeffrey.

Packtpub has been the best resource for my area of interest. It should take
one a really long time to run out of _free_ resources and into buying
subscriptions. There are few good courses, that are not inflated with BS to
increase their length.

When I find a course I'm interested in, I pirate it. If I consider it got me
enough value to justify the asked price, I'll buy it as well. More than 80%
don't.

\----------------------------------------------

 _Some learning resources:_

    
    
      > These are just a few, trying not to post a wall of text.
    
      Standard course sites:
       - https://www.packtpub.com/
       - https://www.coursera.org/
       - https://www.pluralsight.com/
    
      Academia(/ish):
       - MIT OCW
       https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/captioned/
       https://ocw.mit.edu/resources/
       Notable:
        - https://ocw.mit.edu/resources/res-tll-005-how-to-speak-january-iap-2018/
        - https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/8-04-quantum-physics-i-spring-2013/lecture-videos/
       - MITx - https://micromasters.mit.edu/
       - https://www.edx.org/course
    
      Math:
       - https://www.mathsisfun.com/
       - https://mathproblems123.wordpress.com/
    
      Frontend:
       - https://frontendmasters.com
       - https://scrimba.com/
       - https://mastery.games/
    
      Devops:
       - https://www.aws.training/
       - https://linuxacademy.com/
       - http://linux-training.be/
       - http://write.flossmanuals.net/command-line/introduction/
       - https://www.tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/
    
      Places where you can practice (development):
       - https://projecteuler.net/about
       - https://open.kattis.com/
       - https://www.codewars.com/
       - https://codeforces.com/contests
       - https://codingcompetitions.withgoogle.com/codejam
       - https://www.techgig.com/challenge
       - https://www.hackerrank.com/contests
       - https://app.codility.com/programmers/challenges/
    
      C:
       - https://www.learn-c.org/
       - http://cslibrary.stanford.edu/101/
       - http://2016-aalto-c.mooc.fi/en/Module_1/index.html
       - https://www.guru99.com/c-programming-tutorial.html
       - http://c-faq.com/index.html
    

\----------------------------------------------

Sorry for the bad formatting and the non-clickable links, it's just the way it
is on HN.

~~~
hello_moto
How do you like Pactkpub? Seems like it's a hit and miss situation. Some
contents are good, some are not so good. They churn a lot of books though and
some of them are niche (which is good).

~~~
112
I go for video only, maybe that's why my view is skewed. Many of the books are
very Udemy-like quality (full of useless fluff), and I generally try to avoid
books.

------
aj7
Can someone suggest a Linux basics course?

------
ignorantguy
pluralsight has lots of stuff

~~~
james_s_tayler
I second pluralsight for that budget. I've been a customer for a few years,
and I find that I've always gotten the value out of it every year. Some months
I won't touch it, other months I'll do course after course integrating the
learnings into a side-project. Variety is huge.

------
workingpatrick
2020 _

~~~
selleck
fixed, thanks

------
n3rio
no one?

