Full transcript of “I tried 50 Programming Courses. Here are Top 5.”. Click a timestamp to open the video at that moment. Need another video? Use the YouTube transcript generator.
0:00 This is my Udemy “Wall of Shame”. Most of the courses that I started, I never finished. And that’s Udemy only. If I start going through all the programming courses that I did not finish on Youtube, this video can keep going for hours. In fact the average completion rate of online courses stands at around 15%. That’s because as a beginner, you want to see fast improvement in your skills and you don’t necessarily need to know everything on the face of the earth. And many of these courses are purposely made very long to make you think that you are getting more value for your money. But, they don’t provide much value for your time. Today, I want to tell you about the top 5 online courses that I have found. Some of these courses are from renowned universities like Harvard and Princeton. These courses are going to help you learn different skills. So, you can not just pick one. Let’s do this.
0:47 Imagine starting your programming journey with the same course that a Harvard student would take after paying 65,000 dollars for the first year's tuition. Sounds unreal, right? Well, you can actually do that without paying a single dollar right from the comfort of your home. This course is called CS50 and it’s available for free on Youtube. But what makes this course so special that 5 million students have watched it within the first 6 months of posting on Youtube? For starters, the course is taught by Professor David Malan, who has also been called the "most popular professor at Harvard". And let me tell you, this guy knows his stuff. We have one more course by him in our top 5 list today. So, stay tuned. The course is designed in a way that even beginners can easily follow along. It starts with the basics of programming using C, but it's not just about coding. CS50 teaches you how to think like a programmer, to break down problems and solve them using
1:34 logic and critical thinking. And the best part about CS50 is the problem sets. These are weekly assignments that challenge you to put what you've learned into practice. They range from simple tasks like printing out "Hello, world!" to building your own search engine. If you have any doubts about whether you will be able to learn programming using this course, go checkout CS50 fairs where the students show off their final projects. From a virtual reality game to a machine learning algorithm, the projects are truly impressive. Link to this course and everything else I discuss today can be found in the description. The hardest part of mastering programming isn't the complexity of the programming itself, but staying consistent with your practice. You start off strong, excited to finish every exercise you can get your hands on, but then life gets in the way. And weeks go by without touching your code editor. We've all been there.
2:20 To solve this problem, we have a course called “100 Days of Code” by Dr. Angela Yu. And it does exactly what it promises. It makes coding a part of your daily routine, even if it's just for one hour. That’s why I have included this course on my top 5 list even when this course is paid and very long. Btw, this is the only paid course on our list today. But how does this course make sure you stay consistent? This course provides daily coding challenges and real world projects that help you stay on track. Even though the main focus of this course is learning Python, it also introduces some other topics like Web Development and Data Science. As a beginner, it's important to explore different areas of programming to determine what you enjoy most. And you will get to do that with this course. But how much do you have to pay for this course? I have seen this course go for 19 dollars on Udemy and it comes with a 30 day money
3:06 back guarantee. You can always check this course out and get your money back if you don’t like it. Once you have learnt programming, most of you might want to get paid to write code. One of the ways to make good money is to get a job as a programmer at a tech company. In order to do that, you have to go through coding interviews. And the questions asked in these coding interviews are very different from the skills you have learnt so far. Most of these questions are based on this one very famous course called Data Structures and Algorithms or DSA which is taught at most universities. Some people watching this video do not have a computer science degree like me. Many simply did not understand DSA well enough in college. For those people, we have this course called Algorithms by Princeton university.
3:53 This course is divided into two parts and taught using Java. Professor Sedgewick, who is one of the instructors of this course, has been teaching Algorithms since the 1980s. He has even invented a few algorithms himself. The instructors of this course have seen many algorithms come and go during their careers. Their book on Algorithms has been a bestseller since the 1980s. This course covers a wide range of topics like sorting, searching, graph algorithms, dynamic programming, and more. Rather than focusing on specific algorithms in isolation, this course covers the fundamental concepts and techniques that make the basis of many important algorithms. This helps students to build a deep understanding of the subject that can be applied to a wide range of problems in the interviews. That’s what makes this course the best course on Data Structures and Algorithms.
4:38 DSA requires a good understanding of Math which many of you might not have. Additionally, the DSA path gets you hired for generic positions and many people want to work in specialized jobs. One of the most popular specializations that has a very high demand is Web development. The biggest issue with learning web development is that this path is very long and most people lose track as they try to learn web development in an unstructured way. To solve this problem, I recommend Meta’s Front end developer professional certificate on Coursera. If you want the certificate, it will cost you around 270 US dollars. But there is an option to audit the courses and get them for free if you don’t care about the certificate. So why do I recommend this course? Well, the course is taught by the Meta staff who work in the industry and have a good understanding
5:23 of the skills the tech industry is looking for. Meta is also the creator of React which is the most popular and the most in demand front end development library. So, you’ll learn the best practices in React through this course. This course is extremely comprehensive and covers everything you need to get an entry level job as a front end developer. It teaches the basics like HTML, CSS and Javascript. It also covers Bootstrap which is a very popular CSS framework. We already discussed React which is a popular Javascript library. You will also learn the basics of UI and UX design with Figma. The course ends with a separate section on Coding Interview preparation which is a must to land a job. I will link this course in the description. Everything that we have discussed so far can only get you to the level of junior developer. And there’s a big gap between a junior and a senior developer. That’s because a junior developer can simply write and push code for the bug that is assigned
6:11 to them. But a senior developer has to make sure that the systems this code gets deployed to do not break down if this code is buggy. Additionally, they also need to ensure that the architecture of this system is designed in a way that it can handle a large number of user requests with low latency. Once again, let's turn to Professor Malan to help us understand how it's done. Now this one is not a full course per se, it’s just an introductory video on how to think about scalability. But it’s a great starting point because System Design can be quite overwhelming for some people. This video covers basics like horizontal scaling, load balancing and scaling. It also covers slight advanced concepts like data partitioning and security. If you are curious about what exactly happens in the time between you type a url and the website loads, you should definitely watch this course. Now you know all the different courses you can take to streamline your programming journey.
6:56 But you still don’t know how to pick a roadmap that is personalized for your background. If you want me to help you with that, watch this video. My name is Sahil and I will see you in the next one.
