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How to Use Git and GitHub Self Paced Course at Udacity

How to Use Git and GitHub Self Paced Course at Udacity

Udacity is one of the many providers for freely available learning content. As with real schools and learning sources, the quality of classes are mixed. However, motivation is a huge factor in completing the courses, regardless if they are freely offered, or require a small tuition.

The course How to Use Git and GitHub has been online for years at Udacity, but its well-written and designed for todays generation of young learners. Its so easy to just jump in and learn concepts and tools such as Git and GitHub, but going through the basics via a short course serves the purpose of developing a strong foundation and good habits. Moreover, students get to see how real professionals think and work, unlike in the academe, where instructors and teachers are generally out-of-touch with the reality of the digital workplace.



Although there are parts of the Git and GitHub course that can be daunting or wordy for younger learners, I thought it was presented well and I would recommend it to anyone who will eventually work with version control, regardless if their school, company, or project uses a GUI frontend. The basics matter, and though the byte size sections can be tiring, it helps learners maintain a sense of progress.

There have been many criticisms leveraged against free online courses and MOOCs in general. However, after recently reviewing and sampling current courses at a university for a technical article, I realize that much of the issues are indirectly related to todays generation of students, which are easily distracted by smartphones and gaming, and lack the patience to sit through lectures or practical sessions.

Online lessons that are self-paced allow plenty of time for a student to gather their focus. Pausing an exercise or a YouTube video gives even the most distracted learner time to concentrate and collect their thoughts to move on, as opposed to struggling through a lengthy lecture with noisy, undisciplined classmates. However, motivation and initiative matters.




Note: Having spent a lengthy time as a technical trainer in the 2000s, I feel for the aged instructors and persevering teachers of today. Although previous generations of students have their faults, the challenges of holding the attention of vacuous, disrespectful, and self-absorbed Millenials who refuse to let go of their smartphones, tablets, and laptops are clearly greater than the issues once associated with absent-minded Baby Boomers and Gen-Xers.

Unsolicited Editorial

Im aware that veteran programmers and developers would scoff at the need of a course dedicated to git commands in Linux and how GitHub works. However, its important to understand the lack of discipline and complete ignorance of students today. If you go to a university and ask a Computer Science student what language they want to excel at, theyll just say "I just want to be a programmer and get paid" or "which one pays the most?" They have utterly no concept of what the software industry is like, and how established the developer community is - no one just walks in and declares that they are a "good developer" without getting crucified by 15-20 year industry veterans.

There are plenty of online forums where young, self-important Millenials are completely eviscerated by developers for their arrogance. The hoopla regarding everyone needing to learn how to code is misplaced. It is definitely not for everyone, and if youre good at chucking garbage cans and enjoy it, theres no shame in not knowing the difference between a bash script and the Schindlers List.

I spoke to the head of a Computer Science department last year regarding the curriculum for testing, which was poorly designed and focused only on software testing (there are hundreds of branches of testing). She just told me she enjoys programming because "she likes solving problems and finds programming exciting". It was clear she had never worked in an enterprise environment or software company where drones of developers review code and churn out generic lines 9-10 hours a day.

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