The Problem with so many Code Courses

hey guys I was reading an article today written by a student instead it was complaining about the nature of her education saying that she was just being crammed full of bunch of information remembering facts but not really understanding anything not understanding the big picture she felt that she was just coming away with a bunch of facts a bunch of memorization not a real understanding and that kind of reminded me of a lot of the cold courses that are out there you see there are two types of cold courses that I see out there you see the project-based courses where they walk you through projects and walk you through projects is cool but it shouldn't be the first level walking through projects has its uses but the problem is that a lot of times the people that are walking you through projects are not really explaining or teaching you all the basic things all the fundamental concepts and techniques behind the projects that support the projects for me and in my courses we do teach and do teach with projects but that's only in integration with a good foundational teaching curriculum if you will and what does that mean that means that I teach you not only the how but I teach you the why and I give you the context and as I've been saying in other vlogs I've talked about this met for many years in fact the key to becoming a great developer is understanding the fundamental principles and techniques because what you're gonna find as you get into your development career is that with just about every project you're gonna have to learn something new so with that in mind it kind of makes sense that you really understand the basic principles and this will allow you to learn new technologies new frameworks new languages much much more easily besides the project-based courses you also have I don't know how I would call my cuz I would call them the snippet based courses where they have you write one line of code little beasts code but they don't really teach you how to use this code for real it's just kind of all disjointed I've had many people tell me if they've done this de site and not saying this this course in that course and they don't they don't know what to do they know they weren't like kind of whatever function is and kind of what an object is but they don't know how to actually use it to do anything and on the other hand you have people have done the project so they've run through a project-based course and they they're writing the code and at the end they sort of get something working but they don't know why half the code does what it what it's doing and why to use it and why would you want to use that style of coding here and you want to use this style coding they don't even - have no idea so they would walk into any type of project for real and they would not be able to actually do anything why you have courses like that because most of the courses put out by people are either put out by coders who have zero teaching experience and even worse coders with zeros teaching experience we've all been coding for a few years a teacher has two major roles number one the teacher has to simplify the key concepts so that the still will have that solid foundation to launch the career whether it be coding whether it be software development in Java or PHP or Python whatever or whether it be martial arts or business you have to be taught the true key fundamentals and these fundamentals have to be simplified so that you really understand what what's going on and the other thing that a good teacher has to do is they have to identify the key concepts that are required to be able to create that foundation with programming there are many many things that you can learn like just within a particular language like Python for instance or JavaScript whatever language you pick they're big they're big and there's all kinds of libraries and all kinds of things that you can do but just like when you're using Mac OS or Windows you use only a very small sliver of you use a very small sliver of Microsoft Windows of any app right if you're using a spreadsheet Excel you don't use hardly anything in there compared to all the tools that all the capabilities that a complex piece of software has same thing with programming languages you have all kinds of things that you could do but most at a time 99% at a time when you're writing software you're gonna be using maybe 10% of the language maybe 20% depending and once in a while you're gonna you know use this module here use this library here etc again that sort of fundamentals coming once because you once you have a fundamental a good understanding of the fundamentals of a programming language or a framework and the rest comes easy if you want to jump into this jump into that that's how my career was when I was a freelance software developer I would walk into projects with well once I had some experience they have four five years experience I would walk into a project and I would have no preconceptions with regards to the language I would choose I would be open to and using any language or any framework even though at the time this is in the 1990s early 2000s I was big into Java that was really my favorite programming language and I even had my own Java framework that I had developed that being said there were several projects where Java was not a good fit and sometimes I would have to learn a new language a new programming language to get up to speed but because fortunately I had really good training in the fundamentals and that took me a long time to put it together it was easy for me to learn new programming languages I can literally learn a new programming language in a couple of days and be functional or learn a new framework in a couple days to be functional and that's really what a good course should have that's what a good teacher should be able to provide is a simplify the key concepts and beat identify those key concepts that you need to know so that you can get up and running as quickly as possible you don't want to go down these rabbit holes of new rabbit holes were you going to learn some strange specialized libraries some rarely use aspect of the language there's no point in learning it now because let me tell you there's gonna be tons of opportunity for you to learn things as you are working as a professional developer either for yourself or working for a company or developing your own apps again the key to being a great programmer great developer is to have a super solid understanding of the fundamentals and any experienced developer will tell you that somebody tells you that's not the case you know that they are just junior intermediate level developers and there you go I hope this is useful bye-bye I just wanted to finish off this I forgot to mention so I had mentioned in a vlog I don't know about a month ago or something but I was getting into the whole minimalism thing I've always been a minimalist if you look at my furniture I like designer furniture but have you know very modern simple lie and simple styles like Eames and Rush Limbaugh's stuff like that so my style is very minimalist by nature and I think that I got that from my martial arts because in martial arts the key to martial arts is to strip away all the excess movement so a beginner will throw punches that are inefficient but as you become more and more and more advanced you're punching you're kicking you're grappling everything becomes much more efficient energy efficient in terms of body mechanics and alignment they become more efficient efficiency is what separates the beginner from the master or from the expert anyway with that in mind I can I am continuing my move towards minimalism and I'm I'm basically just given away giving away tons of stuff I just gave away another five bags of clothes and duvets and Hawk Isis stuff stuff that I was not using I have a rule which I never I didn't implement as as well as I should but had this rule this one year rule if you're not wearing a piece of clothes with you know within the year you probably don't need it and maybe you should just give it away to somebody who could use it and that might be the same thing for gadgets and devices like I have video cameras that shoot 720p and they're fine but since I got fancy cameras like this there's no reason for me to keep these these it's handycams right already call camcorders there we go so I'm gonna be giving away these things as well and I've town you every time I give away something it's like losing five pounds if it feels great and so something to consider it's it's almost frees your mind and what it also does interestingly enough it it prevents you or it reminds you maybe not to buy stuff unless you absolutely need to I was thinking of getting something forgive it was minor piece of furniture but I was like yeah I'm probably just gonna give it away in a year so why am i buying this thing so it's a kind of an interesting mental experiment minimalism if you have that opportunity to become a minimalist we are fortunate enough to have excess in your life I highly recommend you take a look at it because let me tell you you just feel pretty good afterwards alright that's it for sure buh-bye

Channel: Stefan Mischook

Views: 42,788

Keywords: code courses, web development course problems, trouble with code courses, python course, practical code course, practical python course

Id: aC7P_wMc2yI

Length: 10min 11sec (611 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 28 2017