Same. Having finished the course years ago, I remember most vividly the following: never implement your own crypto. Not many details survived the time but it was intellectually rewarding.

I was hoping it would finally be available this year. Now I think it's never going to happen.

That perennial reddit thread on this is priceless, it should be an official meme now!

Also pretend or real J.P Aumasson handle?

I'd say yes, provided you complement the better mental model this course will give you with a reputable cookbook list of how to do X in practice (maybe start at https://latacora.micro.blog/2018/04/03/cryptographic-right-a...), and everything you'd like to do falls into some well-established pattern.

But then you probably shouldn't trust my opinion, because I'm not a domain expert (although I have been involved in security design together with people who are domain experts), and whatever understanding I had is probably somewhat rusty by now .