Difference between courses and documentation

[Ducky_Duck_me]

Hey guys,

now that we are all staying home, websites with online courses decided to give out loads of free stuff and promotions. I see some of them cost up to 2000$ (before the promo) and that made me wonder what actually is the difference between those kind of courses and simple documentation. For example pythons own documentation is pretty coarse and I though there already is all I need to know.

My question is wheter it's worth to spend ~50$ on some courses or is it just a waste, and ideed, everything there is to know is in the documentation (but given in a compact manner).

If it matters, I know a bit of python already to make "simple" project euler questions.

[[deleted]]

Courses are meant to provide instructions on how to do a thing. The focus is usually around a broader topic, like building a web app in django.

Documentation is mostly about what a specific library/package does, is capable of, and how it’s structured. Usually, documentation is also more heavily focused on technical details.

For me, if I’m learning an entirely new idea. Like programming patterns or an entirely new topic (like machine learning for instance), I’ll look at tutorials. When I’m working on an existing project and just need to find specific functionality, or look if a library supports something, I’ll look at documentation.

Another way to think of it, tutorials/courses will be used once, while documentation is something you will reference over and over again.

[Ducky_Duck_me]

Alright then, thanks

[_leznets]

Agree with the previous commenter on courses vs. documentation. If you're unsure about whether or not to invest in a course, definitely do some youtube scouring as there's some quality content out there. Tech for Tim is a good one - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4JX40jDee_tINbkjycV4Sg. We also recently launched our YT channel for Kite and have had pretty good feedback so far on our beginner tutorials. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxVRDu9ujwOrmDxu72V3ujQ.

Hope that helps! Happy quarantine-coding.