In my work environment, I have few colleagues who purchase learning materials regularly either from Udemey or other training platform and try to learn things from them. I have observed them talking a lot about that. I did some self-evaluation on this topic and I realized that I have a different opinion on this subject. I'm a guy who always visits only Youtube if I wish to learn something. I'm always hesitant to spend money on learning anything online. I completely agree that there are some awesome courses available that can provide us some deep learning opportunities but I haven't had any need to explore them.
There are a few premium courses for sure that are very useful for people who want to get into a specific skill. For example, I have seen some courses on Unity and some courses on animations that are very helpful. For subjects that are unique, we may not be able to find enough material online to learn. Those are definitely a good investment otherwise purchasing online courses for some already available material on Youtube can be a waste of money.
Freecodecamp
Whenever I have someone joining my team, the first recommendation I give them is to visit freecodecamp.org and complete the courses over there. It is not easy to complete the courses there. I mean not from a technical standpoint but from a discipline perspective. Someone who is desperate can easily get a certificate thereby completing the course. Casual learners can find it hard. One of the good things about Freecodecamp.org is that they make us learn every single lesson. Only if we learn, we can move to the next lesson. Otherwise, it is not possible to progress.
It is really worth spending time on freecodecamp.org and getting ourselves certified. This is one of the primary reasons why I consider making use of free materials online instead of purchasing a course.
Learning without practicing is not helpful
This is my next thought when it comes to learning. It can be easy to learn many things and keep ourselves up to date. The biggest challenge is to remember them forever. From my experience, I have noticed that we cannot remember everything we learn unless we practice it well. Purchasing courses online and learning from them can do good for some time but when we are not practicing it with real projects, our learning would go away and the money we spent on that might end up a waste.
I always think that learning from free sources is better when it comes to this. When we don't spend money on something that is not going to be useful for us, we don't have to worry too much about that because it is only the time we spent that would be gone waste but even at times the learning would be a good experience for us. But if we spend money on something and if we don't do anything fruitful with that knowledge to recover the money we spent, it can be a hindrance and would make us feel back later and for some people, it will not even motivate them to take a good step.
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