Choose your track to SW development

Hi everyone!

Have you ever thought of what are various resources for learning programming?

If your answer is yes than this post may help you find resources that most fit you. They may help you get an experience for career or hobby in programming.

As a person who is in the middle of getting programming experience I looked for and found a number of most useful resources for my opinion.

It is possible to differentiate those resources according to price, depth of material and its level etc.

At first I want to describe them in a general way and then I`ll provide a table that will summarize those descriptions.

One of the important criteria that is taken into consideration is certainly a price of learning. There are a number of possibilities to learn courses on programming for free.

1. Udacity is one the interesting sources for learning programming. All of the courses there are for free. All of them are taught by people form academia. Courses rated according to learner previous experience such as beginner, intermediate and advance. Most of them use a web enabled Python language as a basic mean of implementing programming exercises.

One of the key features of Udacity courses is that they are highly interactive with lots of quizzes and every course has a number of programming assignments for each lesson.

In addition to free courses Udacity now provides an opportunity to learn a number of them for a fee with dedicated coach that may help to achieve better results and this path has formal certificate that is given after successful project completion.

Brief summary for Udacity:

  • free and not so,
  • certification courses for a fee,
  • detailed academic level courses,
  • highly interactive,
  • transcription for various languages,

2. Next one is Khan Academy. This resource has courses both on computer programming and computer sciences for free. Those courses consists of video material with no assignments or quizzes but with interactive web enabled Python programs for hands on experience. It is unknown to me if they are taught by people with academic background.

Brief summary for Khan Academy:

  • free video materials,
  • no assignments,
  • interactive web enabled Python working programs,
  • transcription for various languages

3. Coursera  is in some way as Udacity but different. Most of the courses there are free but there is a possibility to get a certificate of completion for fee. It has for my opinion the highest academic level out of resources described earlier. It have learning tracks with built-in courses according to syllabus. It has quizzes and assignments. But less interactive than Udacity courses are. Courses are taught in various languages.

Brief summary for Coursera:

  • free courses and not so,
  • certification courses for a fee,
  • highest academic level courses,
  • courses are taught in various languages

4. Udemy also has free courses and ones for a fee. Some of them taught by academics and some not. Courses for a fee consist of video material for a lifetime usage. It also has a certification track for a fee.

Brief summary for Coursera:

  • free courses and not so,
  • certification courses for a fee,
  • lifetime usage of material for a fee course

5. Pluralsight is not free at all but has a wealth of programming courses that taught by developers. It has monthly or annual subscription. There are two types of fees. “Basic” and “advanced” one. For the basic you`ll get video materials for the period of subscription and for the advanced one you`ll be able to get code snippets, presentation and certificate. It is possible to view videos also on mobile. There are no assignments or quizzes whatsoever.

Brief summary for Pluralsight:

  • courses for a fee taught by developers,
  • monthly or annual subscription,
  • certification for “advanced” fee,
  • no assignments or quizzes

So for the summary of this all here comes a table

Resource Basic content for free (Yes/ No) Advanced content for a fee (Yes/ No) Taught by (academia/ developers/ other Interactive(Yes/ No) Localization(Transcription/ Language support)
  1. Udacity
Yes Yes, coach, certification Academia Yes, highly English, Transcription for a number of languages
  1. Khan Academy
Yes No Other Partially Transcription for various languages
  1. Coursera
Yes Yes, certification Academia Partially Taught in various languages
  1. Udemy
Yes Yes, certification Other No English
  1. Pluralsight
No Yes, certification Developers No English

That`s it for today.

See you.

Java Code Geeks


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