aseembehl's comments

aseembehl | 13 years ago | on: Learn C The Hard Way by Zed Shaw

In case one does not want to spend $29, the free HTML book [1] (currently in beta) is good enough. I have been following along the book, and can vouch for it. It is a great way to learn to code in C.

[1] http://c.learncodethehardway.org/book/

EDIT: By posting the link to the book, I by no means meant that the videos are redundant. I would love it if more people en-roll for Zed's Udemy course and support him.

aseembehl | 14 years ago | on: Are jobs obsolete?

Captain Jean-Luc Picard states in the film Star Trek: First Contact that "The economics of the future is somewhat different. You see, money doesn't exist in the 24th century. The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity."

Disclaimer: Copied from the comments on the original article.

aseembehl | 14 years ago | on: Peter Norvig to teach 'Design of Computer Programs' at Udacity

"is Udacity concentrating on short, relatively easy classes for mass appeal and Coursera concentrating on more difficult and rigorous classes?"

Absolutely, your inference hit the nail on the head. Coursera is trying to fill a gap. Very few people across the globe have access to high quality higher education.

Udacity on the other hand, though noble in in their cause, have considerably watered down lectures/assignments for greater accessibility. I can understand the watered down programming class for greater accessibility, since even limited knowledge of programming is something which can greatly empower people who had no knowledge of it before. But advanced classes like robotics are pointless if they don't go into depth of the topic.

aseembehl | 14 years ago | on: Learning From Data - Online Course

CS229A is a course taken by people from different backgrounds not just CS. It basically deals with the practical aspects of machine learning, implementation issues etc. In addition to the lectures and the assignments, stanford students also had an additional course project.

aseembehl | 14 years ago | on: Coursera / Stanford PGM Class is Open

Exactly, Udacity courses have around 50 minutes of lectures per week and 6 weeks of lectures. In total just 5 hours of lectures for the whole duration of the course. I don't believe anything substantial can be taught in such a short duration. On the other hand, most of MITx, and Coursera courses run for 10-14 weeks with 2-3hrs of lectures per week with additional assigned readings for some courses.

I personally had pretty bad experience with Udacity's AI-class last year, IMHO their teaching material is mediocre at best. I don't plan to waste any of my time on their classes specially when there are so many other better options available.

aseembehl | 14 years ago | on: Coursera / Stanford PGM Class is Open

PGM-class looks pretty hardcore. Well done Prof. Koller & Coursera team. Glad that Coursera and MITx are not watering down the material for any of their online courses.

aseembehl | 14 years ago | on: MITx Opens First Course for Enrollment

They are offering MITx certificate for free for this pilot course because, I quote from their website "In this prototype version, MITx will not require that you be tested in a testing center or otherwise have your identity certified in order to receive this certificate." As I see it, this certificate will be more or less of equal value as the Stanford online course certificates, since their is no way to ensure authenticity of the student.

Their plan in (near)future is to charge a small fee and conduct tests at authorized testing centres(ETS centres for example) where ones identity can be confirmed. Since that way they can confirm that their is no foul play involved, the student will also be given course credits from MITx(Discussed here: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/mitx-faq-1219.html ). That for me is really exciting.

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