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Comment by spicemonger | Hacker News Reader

I've taken 2 of David Beazley's courses.[1] And, I highly recommend them. If you haven't seen some of his talks, he's very good at explaining things by building them from nothing.

I took 2 courses: "Rafting Trip" and "Write a Compiler". Both were awesome. The Rafting Trip took us through implementing the Raft consensus algorithm from scratch. And the "Write a Compiler" course had us build a small language using LLVM.

Both courses (but especially the Rafting trip one) were definitely for experienced programmers. In the courses I took, people generally had at least 5 years of professional work. And even still, there were a few people that really struggled to stay on pace in the course.

But at the end, most people had a (kinda) working Raft library or compiler!

[1] https://dabeaz.com/

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I enjoyed the "Rafting Trip" as well, side tracking a bit, anyone have course recommendation for ML ranking and ML recommendation courses or probabilistic data structures and algorithm (for example, bloom filter, Freivalds' algorithm that make multiplying matrix to O(n^2) etc.... etc)?

I've also taken David's compiler course, and it was excellent. I highly recommend taking any course he offers that interests you.

I came here to mention Dave Beazley's courses and talks.

In particular, I recently prepped/ran a week-long, in-house training session of Dave's Python-Mastery[1] course at my day job. We had a group of 8 with a mix of junior and senior Software Engineers and while the juniors were generally able to follow along, it really benefited the senior SEs most. It covers the whole language in such depth and detail that you really feel like you've explored every nook and cranny by the time you're done.

[1] https://github.com/dabeaz-course/python-mastery/

(I enjoyed teaching the class so much that I've considered offering my services teaching it on a consulting basis to other orgs. If that interests anyone, feel free to reach out to the email in my profile.)

How was the participation (number of people, interaction between the instructor and participants and interaction among participants)?

Most of the content was delivered as a 30min to 1hr lecture and then 3ish hour time to implement what was covered. So that portion was basically heads down, though I guess you could have connected with someone to chat while you were working.

But there were some small group breakouts to discuss the topic and get to know one another. And David would try check in with each person one-on-one every day to answer questions, give tips, and say hi.

So generally, I'd say this is not a high interactivity course like a group project or something. Everyone is working on a separate implementation.

Though, I took the courses online. And, it looks like that's how he's offering them now. But around the time I took the 2 courses, he had just switched to doing that because of COVID. Presumably, the in person courses offered a lot more time to socialize and go out for a drink in the evening.

I have also taken the "Rafting Trip" course and enjoyed it. Second that it is for more experienced developers.

I've taken 1 of his course, and I will definitely take more.

As you say, he is very good at explaining things - it's hard to describe, but it just clicks. Highly recommended.

I was a bit worried about the online aspect, but there is a very good flow actually.

Have taken two of his courses (Compiler and SICP) and highly recommend them. The only thing that is stopping me from taking more is I live at the other end of the world and have to stay awake the whole night for 5 days.

+1 to this. Back in the day I read his Python cookbook to get into ML and have found only a few other books since then with that quality.

Sold out :(

Thank you, looking into it

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