HN Academy

I think MOOCs are great for the thing you've been sorta kinda interested in but didn't know where to start. Around the 0%-20% background-info ballpark. For me, my most successful MOOCs have been:

- CS50 at they very beginning of my career ~2015 that brought me to the fundamentals of CS and all that it can do in a very fun way.

- Jazz Appreciation from UTAustin (https://www.edx.org/course/jazz-appreciation-3). I lived near a Jazz club and I often heard snippets of performances while walking by, but I felt like I needed a music background to really appreciate what I was hearing. I randomly spotted this course and I learned which eras of Jazz I like best, common themes in music, common instrument combinations, and the final project encouraged me to go listen to Jazz myself. It's become a fun part of my life in a way that a short YouTube intro or just walking into the club wouldn't have been able to inspire. Part of that was likely the predefined path it offered and Jeffrey Helmer's enthusiasm for teaching the course.

Ultimately, MOOCs can very well be a way to procrastinate on a professional or personal level from just diving into the thing you already have the basics for. But it can just as easily be a way to open you up to something you never thought was in your wheelhouse in a structured path. Blog posts, documentation, and most YouTube videos are too static to serve an absolute beginner that needs questions answered early, consistently, and frequently.