Tired of being duped by titles like this one?
I don't know about everyone else but I am extremely tired and frankly a little bit irritated, that when I see a title to a blog post similar to the one I used for this post; it suckers me in. I see a long intro paragraph explaining what the post is about and that sounds great. Free learning courses to teach a programming language or skill. Awesome. Especially in these times of social distancing and what not.
So I start to read on and the sections are broken up like this:
1. Learn Python -
Learning Python is a valuable skill to become a data scientist and below are a list of free courses offered by sites like Udacity and Coursera. Well I hate to be the bearer of bad news but when I click on your link they aren't free. Maybe for 14 days yeah sure. But in order to get my "free" course you are talking about I need to give them my credit card info and then I can start the course. How is that free? Because I know what all I have going on at home with my family where I have two kids running around and my wife that wants to spend time with me that I can assure you I will forget to cancel that membership in 14 days. And there is no way that I can finish a course like that in 14 days with all that going on.
I am all for paying for courses that teach valuable skills and languages. I am. Hell I teach one one Udemy for Python. But I'm not posting about it saying to go check it out using this link because it's free from this link knowing that it's not but I am probably getting some type of monetary gain by you using my link to get to that course. I am sick of that.
If the courses really are free
Then by all means post the links. edX is the only site that I know of similar to Udacity and Coursera that let you audit a course for free in a given time period and you have the option to pay a fee for a certificate of completion or to upgrade that course to lifetime access(or access to the course as long as it is still offered) I love edX. But no one seems to post anything about the courses they offer which by the way are from universities like Harvard, and MIT. Or companies like Microsoft or IBM.
So for those of you bloggers out there that are taking advantage of people that lost their jobs and want to learn a new skill or to people that just genuinely want to learn a new skill QUIT POSTING ABOUT FREE COURSES TO LEARN X Y Z SKILL if the link goes to Coursera or Udacity. It's not free.
Conclusion
As I said before I am all up for buying courses on platforms that are self paced. Buy a course on Udemy for $20 bucks while it's on sale and take the time you need to complete it. But go to Udacity and Coursera at your own risk of being duped into paying $49 per month for Coursera if you forget to cancel. Or $3000 for three months after your trial period of Udacity is over.
PS Here are links to actual free courses
- https://www.edx.org/
- https://www.zdnet.com/article/kotlin-programming-language-google-offers-free-course-for-android-development/
- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8butISFwT-Wl7EV0hUK0BQ
- https://www.youtube.com/user/TechGuyWeb
- https://www.freecodecamp.org/
If you want to try out coding to see if you like it try the above links. If you want to increase your skills for possible interviews or just test your knowledge go to these links below:
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