I have just now dropped out of a course offered by BerkleyX through the edX platform called CS169.1x Software as a Service. The course is tough to keep up with (given the number of other courses I was also enrolled in), it was fast paced (HW due one a week, where a single HW would require at the very least 3 to 4 days to wrap your head around and complete).
Another yet very similer course I dropped out of was Stanford's Startup Engineering course offered via the Coursera platform. This is the first time the course was being offered so the videos, homeworks and quizzes were not in sync.
What I learned taking both courses (and dropping out after a substantial investment in my time) is that there is a lot of technology that is needed to learn how to set up a web application not to mention the different set of tools that are needed.
I did learn a lot but not in a satisfactory manner; there was a lot of hacking involved and not much developing (and yes, there is a difference). In order to be a developer, you had to know things inside out in a very structured manner. While a hacker puts things or tweaks not knowing how things work as a whole.. I won't go into the whole hacker vs developer debate but this is how I felt taking the two classes and it was pretty frustrating.
Another downside is the shear amount of outside research that was required to be done in order to do the assignments (not in the very least self contained).
i will take the above classes again but this time I will do my pre-studies before taking the above two courses and these are suggestions for anyone planning any of the above courses.
Startup and CS169.1x
- HTML/CSS --- codecademy would be the best place to start
-Git and Github --- codeschool have a try git. read a few other resources would help
- Heroku --- try making a simple web app and get comftroble doing so
Startup course
- Javascript --- codecademy and other resources
- Node.js
- Twitter bootstrap
- Amazon web services --- open an account (you will still need a credit card though you wont get charged for first year use of micro instances)
CS169.1x
- Ruby --- codecademy and codeschool
- Rails --- codeschool and other resources
- haml
- MVC model
I also suggest learning how to use a few good editors.
This should suffice before one even starts any of the above courses... I failed the first time, but I hope I do not the second time round!
