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Comment by saint-loup | Hacker News Reader

This is great, and I like the "no excuse" angle, but the list is a little overwhelming. The problem of self-learning today is not to find ressources, it's to find a good one and stick to it until you mastered the subject. If there are several good ones, just pick one of them. On this subject, see The Paradox of choice[1] and Buridan's donkey[2].

Sidenote: For me, "Windows 7, OneNote + more for students" and Dreamspark go to the same link.

[1] http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6127548813950043200

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buridan%27s_ass

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Agreed. What I find is usually missing from a lot of lists of "learning" online is a time-proven track through a subject to take you from beginner to expert.

I think the problem with self learning is making the information digestable enough and regular gratification to the user about the things they've just learned (challenges that gradually increase in difficulty).

Highlight which of the sites offer that (with icons?) and it would help user pick the right sites based on their patience level e.g..

I think the finality of learning "courses" of traditional education has something to it. There's something to be said for having a task at hand and accomplishing a series of steps rather that lead to something rather than a mashup of useful tutorials and lectures (no-matter how brilliant they are), that don't have an underlying current, theme or curriculum to them.

This is actually something I was thinking about. For instance, say someone wants to learn Ruby. They could go to noexcuselist and find a step-by-step process that someone has made using only free resources. Does that sound like something that would be useful? The hard part is, I'd have to expand the site and make it social, so people can post their own guides. I definitely don't have the technical expertise for that.

I built a basic version of a site that does just that called Polymath - http://beta.whatispolymath.com (here's a sample course on Ruby, for example - http://beta.whatispolymath.com/courses/12/ruby-on-rails-for-...). No longer working on it, but email me if you want to chat more.

I thought it could have actually been built out a bit more. If they created a few more categories (and sub-categories), they could really have something very cool on their hands.

I've got the same feeling. I'd add categories for education level, accreditation and course length. Having a "starting soon" section would also be fine, listing the courses starting between now and the next two weeks.

I agree with you on 'picking one' and sticking to it. Maybe I should highlight one source for each that I strongly recommend or something?

Also, thanks for the heads up about the Dreamspark link. Looks like windows recently redirected it to the same site. You used to be able to download Windows 7 and other resources for free as a student...

I would be curious to know what you think of our self learning site called LearningJar.com, where we are helping people figure out the best resources to learn skills and follow their progress.

brings us back to the days of web directories

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