There are more and more online courses available. The ‘Learning by doing’ are in my particular interest. Here I want to:
– list the courses or sites I attended and write a short summary
– know the same from your side – feel free to add your thoughts on online courses.
Where I have been
About: Linux Academy is about the Ops part of software development. It teaches basics and advanced concepts of clouds, infrastructure automation, containers and so on.
Good? yes. Currently I am during the Ansible course and I recommend it.
Why? There are short lectures and so called ‘server lab’ where you can create up to six cloud servers and do all the exercises on them.
Why not? n/a
About: For learning web development (HTML, JS, CSS). Starting from real basics to advanced Topics.
Good? yes. I did HTML, JS and CSS (partially also git). JS starts from real basics but ends with quite important advanced topics.
Why? You have code editor online, so you do all the exercises online, have instant feedback
Why not? Maybe first you’d like to try CodeAcademy (below) which is free.
About: For web development basics
Good? yes, as a starting point. If you need more advanced topics, go to CodeSchool
Why? Its free and good. Exercises and course is held in a browser
Why not? if you need advanced topics, go to CodeSchool.
About: Courses teaching Design Patterns, Refactorings, Code Smells detection for Object Oriented Languages. Advanced topics for practitioners.
Good? yes. The exercises you do on your IDE with their plugin installed. Plugin traces all your steps on doing the exercises and provides you with the feedback assessing not only your result but also the style you’ve reached it – I liked the feedback
Why? Practical application of refactoring techniques, Design Patterns with automated IDE refactorings / shortcuts
Why not? very expensive!
About: various set of courses, not only for developers. I did only the Scala course there.
Good? yes, but probably depends on course. Scala course was well prepared, with practical exercises in your IDE
Why? free site, with a lot of courses. You can always start doing one. Coursera has schedule so encourages you to regular attendance
Why not? n/a
Where I haven’t been
Treehouse, lynda, pluralsight, edX. But are they even interactive courses or just a set of video tutorials? Let me hear from you!