[jamestimmins]

Udacity was an essential tool when I was working to get my first job as a developer, specifically the Intro to Web Development course taught by Steve Huffman. But its effectiveness came because it gave me the tools to go on and build projects in my free time; those are what I showed to potential employers, not the certificate I received from taking a (then) free online course.

As far as I'm concerned, that's the key metric for education in a field like software development where students build projects to show to a potential employer: do graduates have the knowledge needed that they can go out and build projects that will get them hired, without naming where they acquired the knowledge. If you succeed in that for long enough, then the value of the brand name will develop naturally. Udacity still appears to be quite strong in what matters most, actually educating students, regardless of their marketing materials, which is where ITT Tech failed.

[muraiki]

I also owe my career to that course -- and really, to Steve Huffman's excellent instruction. The course has just the right level of depth. From that course I went on to build a paid site with Django (which also has great instruction in the form of an amazing tutorial), and shortly thereafter was able to land my first programming job using that project and some other things as my portfolio.