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A Beginner's Quick Glance At Two Of Udemy's Free Courses!

UdemyUdemy recently has been featured both here on Low End Box and on Low End Talk. Also, on September 20, 2021, Low End Box previously featured Low End Talk’s Udemy thread.

Low End Talk’s Udemy thread has been around for awhile. The thread was started on September 12, 2021 and now has 36 pages, 15.8K views, and 1.1K comments. The high level of interest in Udemy caught my attention!

On June 10, @Arkas posted on Low End Talk about Udemy’s Linux Operating System course. Since I have interest in courses about operating systems and in tools to teach operating systems I decided to head over to Udemy and take a look around. Here are stories about my first and second contacts with Udemy. Please enjoy the stories! Please remember that, as a Ude-newbie, I almost certainly missed some important stuff.

First Contact — Operating Systems Course

When I clicked the link for Udemy’s Linux Operating System course, the course was not shown to me as free despite the coupon code 8DFC69DBD14EF3D0EC84 which was part of the link. I was coming from a Mexican IP, and I was asked for MX$179. That seems to convert to US$9.16.

The Udemy cart said coupon NEWTOLEARNING had been applied. I tried removing NEWTOLEARNING by clicking the “X”. That didn’t seem to work. I tried manually entering the 8DFC69DBD14EF3D0EC84 from the link posted on Low End Talk. That didn’t seem to work either. I didn’t see any error messages.

I tried accessing Udemy from my phone and from my laptop (both Mexican IPs), and again on my laptop after clearing all Udemy and www.udemy cookies. There were 31 cookies. Removing the cookies didn’t seem to help me get a free course.

Next, using Tinyproxy, I also tried accessing the posted Udemy link from a US IP. I was asked for US$14.99. The cart said USLEARNNEWSKILLS had been applied. I tried manually entering 8DFC69DBD14EF3D0EC84. I got a message that said, “This coupon has exceeded its maximum possible redemptions and can no longer be used.”

Back Again To Sign Up — PHP, MySQL, & AJAX

Later, I returned to Low End Talk, where I found a new post by @ddantas mentioning several more free Udemy courses, including one called Create a Members Only Blog using PHP, MySQL, & AJAX. I headed back to Udemy to see whether this course would be free. And it was!

I signed up for a Udemy account and “bought” the free PHP course. I picked PHP because I don’t know much about it. I like jumping into something I don’t understand. And I’m here writing on WordPress, which uses PHP.

So far I have watched two sections of the twenty section course. The sections are short videos, like 3, 5, 8, or 11 minutes. I liked the video on demand rather than forcing me to watch at a set time. I also liked chopping the videos into shorter lengths instead of the traditional university lecture length. One easily can watch more than one video section, but clearing time for a whole lecture can seem daunting.

I didn’t have any trouble listening to or watching the videos. I missed any information that I should have seen about course prerequisites, so I was surprised to hear the instructor mention in the video that students should have a LAMP or LEMP stack already running. Luckily, I do have the LAMP stack already set up, but the set up might be a challenge to new students who sign up for the course without realizing that substantial LAMP or LEMP setup is a required prerequisite.

I also downloaded the zip file containing the course resources. The last modified date on the included index.php file seemed to be March 23, 2016. At one place in the course video I noticed a 2014 date:

Editing code at Udemy

Maybe it’s all just fine, but perhaps this class might be affected by changes since 2014? What about new PHP versions, for example? And, these days, I am guessing that almost everyone might use VS Code or VSCodium instead of NotePad, which was used in the course.

It was interesting to consider the design for the Coffee Shop website used as the course example in the context of Udemy’s much more complex site. Nevertheless, the design seemed okay, and the video presented both the design and the code clearly.

Above all, the course is free, and free is good! I’m looking forward to finishing the class!



1 Comment

  1. it is a good newa.

    June 15, 2022 @ 2:31 am | Reply

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