Free coding exercises for budding gophers (2017) | Hacker News Reader

Free coding exercises for budding gophers (2017)

gophercises.com

69 pointsphilonoist13 comments

> Gophercises is free, but you need to provide a working email address to gain access. I won't spam you and unsubscribing is very easy.

Er, why? It's just a bunch of exercises and lessons, right? Gating it behind a sign up seems completely artificial, and something that would only be worth doing if you wanted to spam people or sell their data.

It is definitely part of sales funnel, but it was light touch sales. I have played with it and can vouch that the mails are not spammy.

how do u measure users without sign up? if i want somebody to invest in my website i need to say "i have x amount of users", which i can run a sql or whatever db i have command to see. a fake email takes 2-3 minutes to make.

You can have user accounts without requiring an email at all. Or, you can look at page hits and use that as a proxy measure.

This is a free “course” in the author’s platform. He has paid courses that he occasionally sends emails about when he has promotions. I’m quite stringent about what I unsubscribe to and his emails have not come even close to that threshold.

Imo the challenges are well thought out as are the solutions. I feel giving my e-mail up is a good exchange of value. I’ll probably end up buying one of his courses eventually.

So that is spam; it's nice that it's low-impact and not too awful, but can you understand why I might be a bit put out at someone saying "I won't spam you" and then sending unsolicited marketing emails?

It's generally accepted (at least by those who allow google to shape their worldview, which is pretty much everyone except maybe you) that there is a difference in degree if not in kind between spam and promotional emails.

Count me as a 2nd person who doesn't see the difference between spam and promotional emails. Any unsolicited email that is detailing product offers and prices is spam.

I am not sure what google-shaped worldview has to do with anything. Maybe I don't understand your comment at all.

Anything unsolicited is spam irrespective of how good or useful the content is. The website says "I won't spam you", so I kinda assume that my email is only used for notifications.

I understand your view. It is probably more correct to say “you’ll receive occasional marketing emails from me”.

My view is mostly from the “there is no such thing as a free lunch” perspective. If I see an exchange of value it’s fair to me. I can always unsubscribe or not buy what he’s selling.

Personally I just can’t fault him for trying to make a living.

In my head I was thinking of a definition like the one below when I wrote that:

"Spam is irrelevant or inappropriate messages sent on the Internet to a large number of recipients." - https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7048231

When people sign up for Gophercises, the first two emails I send them are about the course asking how the course is going, if they had issues with the player, etc.

After that they get Go related emails. Eg https://ckarchive.com/b/0vuwh9hvx32q Again, not really irrelevant given the interest in learning Go, and 99% of the people I talk to love those emails.

Maybe 3-4x per year I'll have a sale on my other paid courses. During those times people who have been on my mailing list for a set period of time (I think it is at least 10 days and have received at least 2 previous emails from me without unsubscribing, but I'd need to double check) will get a notice about the sale. I try to avoid being super annoying with those, so they will often contain useful lessons about coding with Go even if you aren't interested in the sale.

I make my living selling Go courses. I was only able to create and offer Gophercises as a free course because of this, so yes, I require an email address and I use Gophercises as a marketing tool. I try to make it a decent experience, but no matter what I do someone will always complain. I find my time is better spent helping the people who enjoy and appreciate what I am doing.

Can anyone recommend similar exercises for python and javascript?

Super useful exercises, very practical. I can definitely see myself doing some of the paid courses if I'm focused on Go at work longer-term.

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