| Paying a (remote) mentor to demonstrate how he/she codes is the author's answer to the article's headline. >My particular idea was to watch someone’s live coding via Skype,
[...] After I posted my offer on Upwork, I got over 10 candidates within 2 days. My hourly rate range was around 10-40USD, and each candidate requested between 10-40USD.
If you want to approximate this without spending any money, you can watch youtube/vimeo videos on any conceivable computer task. You can watch how experts use the vim editor, code games from scratch, deploy something to AWS, create MS Excel financial models from SEC 10-K filings, apply special effects in Photoshop, etc. Whether or not "mirror neurons"[1] are true, the youtube videos seems to help people. You can use the free videos sort of like a "twitch.tv" to learn programming. A lot of the youtube videos (especially long multi-hour ones) include actual "think time" so you hear the presenters explaining their thought process and watch how programmers sometimes backtrack from dead ends. The professional videos from Pluralsight/Lynda/Coursera will be edited to not include the messy (but real life) progression of building something from nothing. Sure, if you pay money for a mentor, you can get specific questions answered which is definitely an advantage. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neuron |
Update: For really motivated students they can live watch some one code here: https://www.livecoding.tv/livestreams/