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Comment by povertyworld | Hacker News Reader

I think you're confusing Udemy with Udacity. I think this confusion is common, and probably not helping Udacity much.

Even Udemy is not that bad. If you wait for the right price you can get a decent introduction to a topic you are interested in. I learned to use Blender that way, filled some gaps with different platform SDKs and so on. Great way to kickstart a hobby.

I very much agree with that. Finding a decent course can be a bit challenging though.

My strategy is to filter for 4.5 or more stars and more than 1000 students.

I‘m not saying all courses below this threshold are bad but for filtering I‘m strict about these numbers. 4.5 is a good threshold because I found that even at 4.4 there are so much more courses that selection is a pain. Udemy conveniently has a filter with exactly this limit.

If a course is over 4.5 I don‘t care about the rating as long as there are more than 1000 students. There is a class of courses which usually have 4.7 or 4.8 stars and few hundered students but are terrible. I guess this where they land with bought students and ratings.

Which Blender course did you take BTW?

I've known Udemy for a lot of time but never really cared.

Until I started looking for courses on uncommon subjects I am interested in. Then I discovered a new world, basically.

I now always keep one eye on sales at Udemy, and will be spending 200€ on a single course in the following day.

Content quality, as always, depends on the course and the author but generally when it comes to IT and related stuff the rating is a good indicator of quality.

Udemy has literally always got sales on. I don't think I've ever paid more than £11 on a course

Once while logged into my Udemy account (with three past purchases) I was disappointed to see that classes were no longer on sale. But opening Udemy in a separate incognito window showed the classes at their usual heavily-discounted pricing.

I’ve seen the same and it has absolutely stopped me buying courses at Udemy (even for $11). I previously bought around 25 courses at $10-11ea and was probably good for another 100+ paid over the coming decade.

Worse for them, I’m a decision-maker on corporate training. 0 chance Udemy gets the nod there with tactics like this.

[0] - I have 42 total courses in my account. I didn’t bother to count how many were paid vs free.

> I now always keep one eye on sales at Udemy, and will be spending 200€ on a single course in the following day.

Are these not covered by the perma-sales?

No, the topic is very specific and AFAIK the course author decided that the course will never be part of sales.

Try this coupon code: 1218HOLIDAYSALEB

Yeah, it was not accepted. Thank you anyway :)

I ask a single question with every course I take: can I list three actionable things I learned from this course?

If yes, then the price was probably worth it.

I took a Udemy marketing course that regurgitated most of the information I already knew. BUT it included a bit about positioning that I adopted and which landed me more than $10k worth of clients.

I paid $20 for it. Good deal I'd say

Udemy is not that bad, it is WORSE, they have been aggressively sending ads for courses like this:

https://www.udemy.com/crystal-healing/

EDIT: not sure it's the same course, turns out there's many with similar names on Udemy...

The Youtube ads are so unbelievably patronizing that I wouldn't dream of giving them my money.

I agree. I've lost count of the number of times I've heard "Python's where it's at. You can do almost anything with it"

skips ad

Your drawings would look great in 3D!

If anything I think that Udacity might be hurting Udemy's reputation.

I've used both platforms. Udacity is absurdly expensive. I could buy a university course for the price of a Udacity course. The material is pretty decent and having live graders who give you feedback is pretty useful.

In a lot of cases Udemy is a bargain. There is literally ALWAYS a coupon code to get any course for $9.99. While it seems like 95% of the coursework is pretty weak, I have downloaded some truly excellent content. I can't recommend Todd McLeod's Golang courses and Chad Darby's course on Spring highly enough. 10 bucks is an incredible value.

At the end of the day, building portfolio projects with the skills you've learned from Udemy is much more valuable than whatever recruiting help Udacity provides.

In my book Udemy is the superior product.

After a free course on StackSkills a few years back I launched my first ever web site. The experience I gained from that launched my side project which has brought in a bit of extra income and a lot of personal satisfaction. After an excellent $20 course on Udemy, I launched an app to go with that side project which brings in even more extra income and even more personal satisfaction.

Am I a computer scientist? No. Would I get a job as a professional programmer? Probably not. But I got way more out of the Udemy course than I paid for, so I'm pretty happy.

I do wish there was less trash on Udemy though, as a novice its hard to sort through the chaff.

You launched an app, I think you could get a job as a junior programmer (heck, you're ahead of most) :)

Don't sell yourself short.

Rule of thumb: if there’s a perpetual 9.99 sale on, down from 120, it’s Udemy.

They surely hold the record for most frequent sales events of all time.

And if it isn't "on sale", just put the course in your wishlist and you will get an email containing the discounted course within 3 days. Hasn't failed me yet

You're right. I remember one with an amazing machine learning/self driving car course that I took a while ago, and another one known for selling stolen content, and I often don't remember which one is which.

I did, sorry.

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