[xiaoma]

This would be so good if it were available off of Coursera, which is essentially a shake-down for certificate fees at this point. Nand2Tetris is a fantastic course.

Back in its heyday 3 years ago, I did a ton of courses on Coursera. They weren't perfect, of course. There was no higher-level coordination that could lead to covering an entire 4-year degree's worth of material and it was hard to match up courses from different institutions with different prereqs. It was hard to find advanced courses in general and the enforced speed at which content was expected to be completed sucked.

But the automated graders were great. I went through parts of many, many courses before having to abandon them due to work pressures and I finished a few, like the scala course and the fantastic automata course and some stuff from Berkeley before they bailed and moved to edX. It wasn't ideal for adult independent learners, but Coursera used to provide real value, especially for introducing niche topics that wouldn't be available via OCW.

It's a pity they never figured out a business model that would fit what its learners really wanted and just threw up a paywall instead.

[JHonaker]

You could just buy the book. It's what I worked off of.

[chibolo]

You could apply for financial aid. It's pretty easy I got it right away.

[coaxial]

What paywall are you talking about? Unless I'm missing something, every course I did on Coursera had the option of buying a certificate. But if I didn't want to pay, I could follow and complete the course all the same; I just didn't get the certification in the end. The contents were the same, the exercises were the same, and the knowledge gained was the same.

[xiaoma]

That's how it used to be. How long ago was your last course?

They still let you watch the videos but generally don't let you take the quizzes or submit assignments to the auto-grader anymore.

http://cyrilandersontraining.com/2017/02/18/coursera-pay-gra...