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by geerlingguy 2233 days ago
> I'm surprised Jeff is offering his videos for free too though

I figured it would also offer people a distraction / way to learn something during the workday (or night, I guess, outside of US and most of Europe). I've considered doing a full-fledged course a few times (and have had offers to do it for a couple different platforms), but live streaming it kind of forces the issue, and has helped me get a little more structure on my YouTube channel, which has kind of been festering since 2006 :D

Now I'm considering moving on to a similar 'Kubernetes 101' at some point, maybe. It's _relatively_ fun for me, and if it opens up possibilities of another group like Device42 sponsoring portions of it, that would be a net benefit IMO—most of the free content I see is absolute-ground-level and doesn't really get far enough to make someone productive.

I know for myself, having really good intro-course-level content free would've helped my growth earlier in my career (before I was able to get my workplace to pay for decent training material and conference travel).

1 comments

One other aside, I'm often reminded of:

There's a saying "Those who can't do, teach."

I think, on the contrary, a good teacher has to not only be an expert on a topic, but has to poke and prod it further, then distill everything about it down to the essentials to turn it into teachable lessons.

Anyways, I figure that I have a certain amount of knowledge in my head. It would be nice if I could spread that knowledge as far and wide as possible, since that could ignite a bit more passion for good software and solid automation in others.

I always heard it as, "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach."

OTOH, I worked at a .edu for several years (networking) and was asked to teach a course when the contracted instructor suddenly had to back out at the last minute. That led to me teaching a course or two per semester for a few years and, to be honest, I'm fairly certain that I learned way more when I was teaching than my students did. As you said, you have to be much more than just an expert on the topic.

All great thoughts -- you sound like a generous guy :)

> Those who can't do, teach

I'm with you. I'd change that phrase to "Those who have done, should teach".

Reminds me of an idea I think I read in one of Nassim Taleb's books...that growth of education tends to follow the growth of industry, since industry is where a great portion of tinkering and experimentation is happening.