Ask HN: Whats your opinion on online courses?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20685442

by Hornsking • 7 years ago

9 13 7 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

There are a lot online learning course websites like: Udemy, edX, Coursera or similar. I'd be interested whats your take on them. Do you think you can gain useful hard skills if someone is a beginner/intermediate or even on an expert level? Maybe you already did such courses yourself and have experiences you want to share.

If you have other sources for getting started in cyber security topics like: cryptography, pen testing, ethical hacking or basically anything else I'm happy for your recommendations.

A note on the background of my Question: I want to gain new skills specifically in the IT-Infrastructure/Cyber Security field. It's not about money, mainly i want to challenge myself and I'm very interested in Cyber-Security since I work as IT-Admin and want to broaden my skillset, because every time I stop learning I feel like getting behind in the IT-Sector and I hardly have time for a university education, even though it is an Option.

Thanks a lot guys.

davismwfl• 7 years ago

The courses will vary with the instruction and how much effort you put into them, just like most university courses do. I don't think you will go wrong if you want to learn more, even a so-so course will bring up topics you may not have thought about and you can challenge yourself. I obviously like the best courses I can find, but I have sometimes learned the most from courses that were not rated as high by others. Given the costs are relatively modest for most of these style courses, I think you'd do well to try any of them that fit your area of interest and have decent reviews.

Also if you are interested in security there are conferences dedicated to it nearly year round, and they generally offer pre/post conference training and specialized information. That is obviously the more expensive option usually, but my guess is given you are already experienced you'll get a lot out of these sessions.

I'd say university is really not worthwhile, unless you just want/need to add a degree to your title.

Hornsking4• 7 years ago

Thanks.

rc-1140• 7 years ago

Pluralsight is probably the only online learning website that I've used that actually caters to varying skill levels and has some kind of quality filter (there are still courses I've taken that aren't great, but there appears to actually be one in contrast to the ones you've listed). Have had usually good experiences with Pluralsight, it's gotten me up to speed on a lot in a relatively short time.

I don't know anything more than I picked up via osmosis about IT and nothing about cybersecurity, but it looks like they've got a decent catalog of cybersecurity courses.

teddyuk• 7 years ago

I find pluralsight pretty infuriating - the speed the presenters talk is really slow and they keep repeating the same thing, it typically goes:

  - hi, i am going to talk about something
  - in the next section we will talk about that thing
  - in this section we are now going to talk about that thing
  - talk about that thing
  - we just talked about that thing
  - in the last section we talked about that thing
  - earlier, we talked about a thing

It might have got better in the year or so I last used it, I gave up because of this.

ranc1d• 7 years ago

Well with regards to speaking slow I guess that is to suit non-native speakers, however there is always the playback speed button which can be increased to a speed that suits

PaulHoule• 7 years ago

As somebody who has taught college physics and also home-schooled a child in math, I think that doing lots of problems is the most important way to learn.

With my son I used Kahn Academy as the curriculum. He did not get a lot out of the lectures, so I had to explain the content, but having the problem sets was highly valuable and was proof that he was making progress.

eswat• 7 years ago

Their efficacy depends on your learning style. I personally get bored pretty easily with lecture-style learning, even through an online course. I need more experiential learning. So with cybersecurity I’m picking it up through:

- Study guides and practice exams for certificates (that I may or may not get). This is probably the critical thing I do because it sets a track of what kind of material I should be focusing on for the subseqent learning tools.

- Anki/spaced-repetition to remember things like acronyms

- Quick YouTube talks (specifically those not in a webinar format; usually bad production quality and a lot of padding not related to the topic)

- Games to put theory into practice (CTFs, bug bounties, video games that are very abstracted from real hacking but still require exercising logic)

- Podcasts that look at the industry from different perspectives. Currently listen to CyberWork, which has a lot of fluff but I offset that with Darknet Diaries which does a great job of storytelling.

- Trying to explain these concepts in layman's terms to others

Hornsking4• 7 years ago

Interesting, do you have sources for some interesting study guides? I will take a look at CyberWork too.

atsaloli3• 7 years ago

For learning infrastructure, specifically Linux system administration, my recommendations: http://verticalsysadmin.com/blog/training-program-to-make-a-...

Hornsking4• 7 years ago

Thanks for the link, much appreciated!

atsaloli3• 7 years ago

Yay, you are welcome!

Ask HN: Whats your opinion on online courses?

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