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Comment by nickjj | Hacker News Reader

I only post comments like that when it makes sense.

If you asked me, "hey I just downloaded Sublime Text, what are some good packages for a Rails developer?". Why wouldn't I link you to a blog post that lays it all out so you can consume it quickly?

"Let me tell you a secret" is a line I used twice. As a software developer I like testing things and analyzing the results. So when I reply to people, I tend to make note of the wording and phrases I use, and then see how it does.

Nothing wrong with that IMO.

You could choose to ignore the link too, but I'll leave you with this. None of my paid training material has anything to do with "selling the dream". It's all tech courses related to web frameworks and how to deploy them to production. In other words, concrete knowledge that has guaranteed results.

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After inspecting your website, I realized that I had purchased your Build a SaaS App course once, on Udemy. I ended up asking for my money back after discovering that you don't actually build anything, the code is already written and the video lectures quickly breeze through explaining it.

A few people mentioned this in the Udemy comments on your course, and you retorted with snarky replies.

Not a fan of your marketing or your attitude towards customers who were offering legitimate criticism.

Hi,

Sorry you didn't like the course. I don't recall any snarky replies, but you're right. There were a few people who would have preferred a "code everything from a blank page" approach.

The problem is, how do you code up a 4,000+ line Python application with dozens of files and thousands of lines of HTML/CSS/JS together 1 character at a time?

It would take 100+ hours of video and you would want to punch me in the face after hearing me say "ok now type D I V close bracket" for the 400th time in a row.

A vast majority of people (as seen by the reviews) really enjoy the way it's presented and like seeing it get built up in 12+ stages. It's impossible to make everyone on the internet happy. The best I can do is listen to the feedback of everyone and continue tinkering with future content.

FYI - this is a snarky reply

You're being highly disingenuous with your reply, to the point that I agree with the other comment that it is snarky. Assuming your audience already knows HTML and Python is perfectly acceptable if the focus is on building the application, not on teaching how to type HTML and Python from scratch one character at a time. A video could then say "Now we enter in this page of HTML [cut from blank editor to already typed in text]. Note the following sections: [brief explanation of important parts with highlights]" etc. which the audience can follow along via section-by-section downloads. This is a very standard style, and that you seem unaware makes you appear ill-suited for teaching anybody.

Hey,

The course does mention you should have a basic understanding of HTML and Python before starting it. It's meant to teach you about Flask.

There's about 60 HTML templates in total. Rather than put the burden of copy/pasting each one onto the student, I decided to break the entire project up into 20 stages (separated by folders and git commits).

You get to see the application at 20 stages of development (to see how it gets built up). It starts with a single app.py file and finishes with the end result.

Basically I go over each line of code, and explain why it's written and what it does.

This style of teaching was a choice I made based on the direct feedback of hundreds of students in previous courses.

Most of them like the fast paced style where I talk over the code. There's also many hours of code challenges built into the course to get your hands dirty. The refund rate is currently less than 1%.

The point is, change your pitch. Your wording leads to thoughts like the two commenters had above. Shouldn't be too hard if you have real substance to sell.

I can only guess that he's not incredibly familiar with this community and its aversion to BS/fluff... I'm sure he finds great success in his verbiage "testing" on other less savvy forums.

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