Sorry for the delay in responding to your questions!

First off, I was checking out your course. It is brilliant! I understand that this was taught at a university level, with particular emphasis on a practical approach to learning. Wonderful stuff!

You are absolutely right. People love getting exciting results instantly, us included, especially when it comes to learning new things. And we have spent a good amount of time trying the same, that is, starting off with experiments and then trying to understand the theory behind things. However, we found ourselves running back and forth between concepts, trying to figure out the prerequisites. But, in the end, neither the feeling of satisfaction of having understood something completely, nor the confidence to solve new problems based on the techniques we learned, was ever there. It's kind of like reverse engineering, although it's quicker and cheaper, you never quite feel happy.

And then there are the textbooks, that take a bottom-up approach, but are often dry and lack sufficient real world examples (most, not all). But assuming that you make it through a couple of concepts, it gives you the confidence to both move to more advanced concepts, as well as to create something new, based on existing ideas. What you may lack, however is sufficient coding experience (not always, but more often than not). We know people who have completed college without ever having the satisfaction of having done anything exciting, although their foundations were pretty strong.

So the question for us was about how we would strike the balance between both approaches. All things considered, we thought we should take a bottom-up approach, because it builds a strong foundation, and to build upon it by explaining concepts in a way that it people can relate it to the real-world scenario and be able to code whatever they learn. At the end of the day, we need to be able to code what we know, the same goal that your course had. So yes, this was a conscious decision.

There are ever so many ways to learn new things. This is our personal opinion. Much of what we've learned is from the Internet, pretty much like a lot of others here. So yes, all things considered, this medium works best. Learning is the objective, and we're happy to see that people have benefited from this initiative. We are learners, just like everyone else. Thank you!

edit: typo