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. 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 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. 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 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. 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. 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 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 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. 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.
