In this article, I will discuss what to look for when choosing IT courses, the number of which is growing every year. This information will be useful for those who have decided they want to learn programming but don’t know which format to choose: university, courses at a training center, online lessons, or something else. Naturally, I will share my own experience.
First, I will explain why paid offline courses were the right choice in my situation.
Free means for nothing
From free courses, I learned the syntax of the language, basic operators, and became familiar with loops, arrays, data structures, objects, and other basic concepts. I figured out how to read code, but I didn’t learn how to write it myself.
Most free programs won’t teach you the ins and outs at the level of a top specialist. They won’t show you how to work faster and more conveniently with an IDE. They’ll tell you what a function is. You’ll have to figure out what function currying is on your own.
Free courses are often superficial and vague (maybe someone was lucky enough to find decent ones, I’d appreciate a link in the comments). Searching for additional information will take so much time and resources that sooner or later you’ll just get tired and lose interest in the topic.
Self-study using books and online resources does not guarantee that you will acquire up-to-date knowledge rather than something from the legacy section. At the same time, you have no one to turn to for help: no one will point out mistakes or correct bad code. As a result, there is a high probability that you will spend a lot of time without achieving any significant results. I applaud those who were able to grasp the basics of programming on their own and quickly, but I didn’t have such superpowers or time, so I decided to change my strategy and start looking for a course. My priorities were:
- reasonable cost;
- up-to-date curriculum;
- intensive class schedule.
Demand has given rise to an unrealistically large supply: today, there are many IT courses/schools/academies on the market with different formats, programs, prices, and schedules.