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Comment by ohyes | Hacker News Reader

The nice thing about college is that it provides an easy way to find a lot of other smart people who are about your age.

Also, teaching someone else solidifies knowledge a lot more quickly than straight lecture or exercises.

So it is too bad to me that there is no social aspect of this course and these types of programs. Udacity study group on google+ or whatnot would be neat.

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Peter fucking Norvig is going to sit you down and teach you some shit for free and all you have to say is 'argle bargle...social'?

Social: IRC, message boards, facebook, google+, skype, mumble, news groups, facetime, instant messenger, etc.

Try to teach someone something: Stack Overflow, reddit, hacker news, your own blog, also, all of the above under social.

Collaboration: google docs, drop box, ftp, gliffy.

Yea, exactly. Whenever someone of Norvig's caliber is willing to teach, I shut up pay attention. I wouldn't care if Norvig was teaching how to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, I'd have my freaking notebook out scribbling down his recipe.

Despite being a programmer my whole life, I'm taking the Udacity 101 course because you never know how another person's experience with the basics might change your understanding.

Also, is programming a skill that really requires a social element for learning? I've definitely had a lot of fun programming in social settings and in groups, but a lot of the skill is built in the hours of isolation with your fingers on the keyboard.

Hey, when did the 101 start? I'm thinking of joining in but if it is too far along then I might wait for the next round..

If you can still get in, it might not be too late to catch up. Obviously, you can submit all of the homework on time, but if you're score on the final is greater than your homework score, than they just use the final as your grade.

First off, I get that Norvig is a celebrity. Celebrity has little to do with teaching ability.

Secondly, I think reducing my point to 'argle bargle...social' is a little unfair.

This may just be coming from my psyche as someone who has been in a fairly lonely job with few peers, but one of the best things about going to college was getting to know smart and interesting people.(On the other hand, learning to deal with people who have difficult personalities was also useful).

To really get to know someone you have to be in a community with them. I'm not sure that 'social solutions' on the internet would really fulfill this need. They are all the things that you do to kind of numb yourself at the end of the day so you can sleep... there isn't really an intention to engage.

> First off, I get that Norvig is a celebrity. Celebrity has little to do with teaching ability.

Perter Norvig is a celebrity because of his technical accomplishments and teaching prowess. He is the author of PAIP which is regarded as one of the best books on programming. If you haven't already, check out his articles:

http://norvig.com/lispy.html http://norvig.com/spell-correct.html http://norvig.com/sudoku.html

So yes, when someone of Norvig's caliber wants to teach me something, social be fucked, I settle down and listen.

> First off, I get that Norvig is a celebrity. Celebrity has little to do with teaching ability.

It's not like he's popular for being snooki's best friend or something .. I feel Peter Norvig is a celebrity for the right reasons here.. there are two types of teachers - those who get you to see the world in interesting ways, and those who illuminate targets that one wouldn't hit normally on one's own. I'm guessing Norvig's course might be more of the latter type..

> .. but one of the best things about going to college was getting to know smart and interesting people personally, I feel 'getting to know' is not enough. As math ematicians/scientists or techies or programmers, our peer group /culture is our identity, and pretty much the main reason we wake up in the morning and check email for patch updates or stay up till 5 running code and what not. yep, online courses don't give that. And I too badly feel the need for it

tl;dr first point - disagree, second point - agree edit:formatting

My point is, there is no shortage of communication and collaboration tools on the internet.

Regarding your need for community or social learning, there is nothing preventing you from watching these lectures with a group of actual people.

http://norvig.com/paip.html

There is actually a very active social aspect to these Coursera and Udacity etc courses. You clearly haven't signed up yet, check out the forums for each class that are very active, the subreddits (main hub is at /r/OnlineEducation), and the many IRC channels (main hub is #free-class on Freenode). These act as effective study groups with people helping and discussing with each other many things about the courses at hand and related things. And as the other commenter noted, the students' backgrounds very greatly which makes it all the more interesting.

I think I will sign up and try it out knowing this.

Actually, the Udacity courses have very active forums.

There is a good mix of experienced programmers and absolute beginners...if I ever have a problem, I usually have an answer within 5-10 minutes, and I get to return the favour frequently.

I understand this is the digital age, but I personally wouldn't put forums and socializing on campus in the same value category.

Both points are valid, but I think we need to accept there are pros and cons, rather than comparing apples and oranges.

On campus socializing is obviously quite different. I was responding to this:

"So it is too bad to me that there is no social aspect of this course and these types of programs. Udacity study group on google+ or whatnot would be neat."

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