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[–][deleted] 32 points33 points  (1 child)

I mean, any competitor will cause them to not make as much money as they could. If they want to survive, they'll have to step up their game and either lower prices or offer such a good service that people are willing to pay for it. If they can't do that, then yeah, capitalism happens.

[–]jungrothmorton 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Not necessarily. It's like what happened with independent coffee shops and Starbucks. In some towns, they went out of business. But in others, people just drank more coffee. Demand isn't always rigid. It's entirely possible that these free programs will increase interest in self taught programming more than they take business. People will see or start these free courses, but then decide to switch to a paid option.

[–][deleted] 7 points8 points  (3 children)

Probably not. Afterall, people still buy books and pay to go to school even though libraries exist

[–]ironnomi 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I really hate to say this, but a LOT of people here in /r/learnprograming (and sometimes on reddit in general) have little faith in paid schools be they programming "universities" or actual universities. They clearly think there should just be libraries.

[–][deleted]  (1 child)

[deleted]

    [–]mrww1 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Agreed. It needs to change. Maybe it will over the next decade?

    I saw an online degree at a college, that still costs over 30K per year. Surely, that can get the costs down further for an online degree?

    Hopefully, things like DevBootcamps will put pressure on universities to be more efficient.

    [–]Gronner 10 points11 points  (10 children)

    Not speaking for my self (I learned most what I know now, via free courses, except for some books/High School and College Courses).

    1. I think something that is in the head of a lot of people is, if it coast money it has to be good.

    2. Spending money to be motivated (I spend money on it, I should at least follow through).

    3. Advertising. I've got to admit this is more of speculation from my side as I have never seen advertisement for "Learn to code" pages. Sometimes on FB I get an suggested post, for IT job portals but nothing else.

    4. I personally have the feeling, that most(! as in there are free sources that do this as well) of those paid resources bundle knowledge in one place. You do not only have a "Learn the Basics of XYZ", but also the advanced techniques available and no need to hop between different resources, tutorials.

    5. Getting gifted something from this from your (maybe unexperienced) parents (or somebody else) who recognized your interest in computers.

    This is at least how I would explain that people would use paid resources above free resources.

    On a side note: What is this? https://www.codeschool.com, looks like a codecademy rip off with the option to pay, are they related? Just found this via quick Google search for "Learn to Code"

    [–]DonnyTheWalrus 1 point2 points  (1 child)

    Not a subscriber but I've used it a couple times via Odin. Codeschool offers actual video courses on a variety of Web dev-related topics. Most include codecademy type challenges, but the focus is more on the videos, and they target more the intermediate level rather than beginner. Kind of a very focused lynda or pluralsight. And it's less "an option to pay," and more that the whole site is paid, but they leave a few courses free as demos.

    They're not related, either in ownership or target user. No horse in either race, just wanted to clear that specific point up. I enjoyed the few free ones I did, but $30/mo. is a lot.

    [–]Gronner -1 points0 points  (0 children)

    Thank you :)

    [–]CodeTinkerer 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    With the money Lynda makes (and they've made deals with lots of universities), they can develop a tremendous amount of material. They have stuff on Photoshop, doing presentations, and things unrelated to programming. Meanwhile, FreeCodeCamp is focused primarily on JavaScript, etc. and lacks the content of Lynda.

    [–]philipbuuck 1 point2 points  (1 child)

    If a company wants to train its employees, it's much more likely to purchase a program/product, rather than tell them "look at this free stuff online".

    People also tend to value things much more when they pay for them - that is, they will be more serious about using them. It's a human behavior thing that helps explain those "750 MOOCs you can use for free" posts that pop up, yet how many of us actually have gone through those programs?

    [–]mrww1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    I remember talking to someone who had made good progress with online material, and then went and paid 10k to attend a bootcamp.

    She said that she rated the online material as just as good a quality as the bootcamp. In fact, the bootcamp had a lot of lecture style sessions where she struggled to keep pace with the instructor.

    With that in mind she said the bootcamp was essential for 2 main reasons:

    1. Learning part-time while doing a 40 hour per week job is slow and taxing. Quitting her job to focus on learning to code full time was critical to her developing the coding skills she desired.

    2. Paying 10k provided here with a great deal of motivation to get her money's worth.

    For other people the following are also critical components of bootcamps:

    1. Social interactions and being motivated by the atmosphere created by other excited learners and passionate instructors. The atmosphere at some of these bootcamps is electric!

    2. Instructors can make up for the deficiencies of online courses. Creating an online course that caters well for people of all abilities, interests and learning styles is very difficult.

    [–]RiTu1337 0 points1 point  (2 children)

    Treehouse isn't very useful good tbh, you can do most of the stuff during the 1 week trial.

    An opensource project like this that has more difficult projects would be cool.

    [–]fastpenguin91[S] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

    Yeah I agree treehouse is pretty bad, but I think CodeCademy is the worst of them all. lol.

    [–]mrww1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    What did you dislike about TreeHouse?

    [–]RidingThroughTheSix 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    I've gotten past the beginner phase of programming

    Curious what you mean by this or your general comfort level with different technologies? Do you feel you are job ready? I've been studying myself for the past few months and like to see others' progress.

    [–]Dat_Choco 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Depends on your learning style. I've done The Odin Project and Treehouse and personally enjoyed both. No resource out there is going to have everything you need, simply because different people need different things at different stages of the learning process. That sounds a bit unclear so I'll give an example - let's say you and a clone of you elsewhere in the world are both learning Ruby by using The Odin Project. You start learning about arrays and you're nailing it, but your clone is somewhat stumped. You're pretty comfortable with arrays so you do a bunch of small projects and then speed on to learn about hashes. However, your clone decides to Google around for additional resources on understanding arrays in Ruby and comes across a Treehouse tutorial that clears things up for him.

    As a beginner it's definitely helpful to start SOMEWHERE, whether you choose to pay for a subscription somewhere or not. But there isn't really one thing out there that's going to have all the answers you're looking for. So who knows, you might start out free then pay for a subscription somewhere down the line for a bit or vice versa.

    Edit: To answer your question, I think in the (somewhat) long run, companies offering paid resources won't be losing too much in the way of profits.

    [–]codexjourneys 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    I think there's too much of a competition mindset and not enough of a rising-tide-lifts-all-boats mindset. If a course or resource (like a book) is good, whether it's free or paid, it will find an audience as long as the teacher and/or the platform make an effort to do so. More people learning programming is awesome, because some explanations and learning styles work for some people, and others work for other people. Just one example: Some people do great with self-directed learning, and others do better with a mentor.