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Warning: That cheap online coding course cost me $47 and wasted 3 weeks | Coding For Beginners - Librear

Warning: That cheap online coding course cost me $47 and wasted 3 weeks

I bought a beginner Python course on a flash sale for $47 thinking it would be a steal. Turned out the instructor mumbled through every video and the code examples had typos that broke constantly. I spent more time troubleshooting their mistakes than learning anything. Meanwhile my buddy pointed me to a free YouTube playlist that covered the same stuff in half the time and actually worked. Has anyone else gotten burned by a low-cost course that promised way more than it delivered?

3 comments

3 Comments

stone.sarah5mo ago

My sister bought a $30 gardening course last spring that promised to teach you how to grow tomatoes in pots. The instructor spent half the time talking about his personal life and the other half recommending expensive brand-name soil that wasn't even available in our state. She ended up learning more from a library book about container gardening, so I totally get the frustration of paying money for something that just sets you back.

riley_king164mo ago

The part about the instructor talking about their personal life for half the time really hit home. I took a woodworking class once where the guy spent the first 45 minutes telling us about his divorce and then rushed through the actual technique. What worked for me was finding a local community college class that was cheap but structured, and the teacher actually had to stick to a syllabus. After that I started looking for courses that had a clear outline posted upfront, so I knew exactly what I was getting. Also, I asked around on nextdoor and reddit for recommendations from real people who took the class, not just the star reviews on the site. That saved me from wasting money on another talker who just wanted to hear himself go on.

thomas_scott5mo ago

Three weeks of troubleshooting code examples with typos"? I have seen some bad courses but that is just ridiculous. How do you sell a coding course where the actual code they give you doesnt even run? I'd be furious if I spent that long debugging someone else's mistakes instead of learning the basics. At that point you basically paid to be a beta tester.