Ask HN: Please recommend university open courses for software design?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42363293

by ryuzaka • 2 years ago

60 19 2 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Hi everyone, currently I am trying to learn software design & engineering by these mit opencourse courses https://openlearninglibrary.mit.edu/courses/course-v1:MITx+6.005.1x+3T2016/about

https://openlearninglibrary.mit.edu/courses/course-v1:MITx+6.005.2x+1T2017/about

I think I learn much better by these type of university courses and was wondering are there any other universities open courses on subject of software design or construction with actual projects, assignments, pdfs for learning material that other folks have used.

I think these kind of courses can help a lot of students with software design.

Open to any programming language and framework:)

imposterr• 2 years ago

After the fundamentals, you'll learn more building something on your own than following any course.

This is even easier today than it's ever been with ChatGPT at your side.

ksoped• 2 years ago

This is terrible advice. Sounds like OP wants to learn industry standards/practices and tooling. How are they supposed to pick that up on their own? It's more likely they'll just develop bad habits, especially with ChatGPT.

Taters912• 2 years ago

I agree. You may get things done and learn some things from a solo project, but in industry software engineering is much more about maintaining and extending code you haven't written. You can't emulate that by yourself.

Taters912• 2 years ago

Do not use ChatGPT if you are beginning coding. It does not always produce valid or good code, and if you are not experienced, you may pick up on bad habits that some people's code in ChatGPT's training set has built.

avemuri• 2 years ago

It's not great for blindly generating code to use, but it's great for asking for help -debugging, planning etc. I ask it a lot of 'dumb' questions and I feel like I've learnt a lot more than I have in the past. It's given me code that doesn't work every now and then, but I'm yet to find an instance of it explaining a concept wrong.

dotdi• 2 years ago

Engineering Software as a Service (pt. 1 and 2)[0] had some of the all-time best ROI regarding time and effort. This is the same course that they taught at Berkeley (recordings from the classroom). It was excellent.

It was exceptionally well done, and taught me things I still cherish to this day. Assignments were graded by automated tests, which is always nice. They provided a VM for a more hassle-free workspace setup.

Unfortunately, it has been discontinued, and I doubt that it can still be followed due to dependencies going out-of-date.

Maybe somebody can weigh in with a more recent course that offers a similar experience.

[0] https://learning.edx.org/course/course-v1:BerkeleyX+CS169.1x...

gcheong• 2 years ago

From the textbook's website, it looks like they're coming out with a v2 soon to match the second edition and the course is available through UC Berkeley's open enrollment.

https://saasbook.info

ryuzaka3• 2 years ago

Just checked the v2 and it is interesting. Thanks for suggesting dotdi & gcheong.

hnarayanan• 2 years ago

I took this course when it was first offered and pivoted to being a saas founder. It was indeed exceptional.

cleanerbob• 2 years ago

No they can't. You are trying to force the issue. You need a concrete project and you iterate on it with features. You add gui and a database. You refactor and optimize. These courses are cookie cutter in a vacuum problem sets that give you high level ideas but not the experience of dealing with messy constraints. Also don't be open to any framework. Choose one get good, finish a project start a new one get better. Buy books on the subject. You are not going to listen your way into six figures you have to do the work.

vismit2000• 2 years ago

Just read 'Philosophy of Software Design' - some really great and profound advice in a sub 200 page book with compact examples

ghjfrdghibt2• 2 years ago

My experience of university software courses are they are out of date and not worth it. Were I to do it again, I'd do a practical course specific to the area I was interested in.

ryuzaka3• 2 years ago

Any practical courses that you would recommend?

ghjfrdghibt2• 2 years ago

I can't recommend any courses as I went do the academic route. But my experience is these academic courses do not give you any practical knowledge that will help you in industry. Were I to do it again I'd start with udemy initially as the courses are cheap and seem decent. They focus on specific technologies.

Ask HN: Please recommend university open courses for software design?

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