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Show HN: Help us curate the web’s best content for learning programming & design

49 points by hv23 ↗ HN
Link here: http://beta.whatispolymath.com

Despite all the educational material on the web, I found it pretty hard to learn how to code and design. I had trouble finding high-quality content, figuring out what to learn next, and staying motivated without easy ways to track my progress. So, my co-founder and I built Polymath.

Our MVP is pretty simple right now: you can find & submit good content, bookmark & track your progress across different resources, and rate/comment on the material. We’re trying to build a really fun online learning community, and we’ve got some more cool features in the works.

We're really excited about going live, and we'd love your feedback & comments. We're just getting started with this, so please add any great content you think should be on the site -- help us make this the web’s best open resource for learning programming/design!

Note: We currently require Facebook for login, with more options to sign up coming soon. Sorry about that-- we hope you'll still give us a shot even if you feel strongly about that :)

20 comments

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thesash
Clickable: http://beta.whatispolymath.com.

Curation is huge, especially as the number of available resources continues to increase. In the past few months I've either used or thought about using:

http://teamtreehouse.com

http://www.udemy.com/

http://www.udacity.com/

http://www.lynda.com/

http://www.cs101-class.org/hub.php

http://www.codecademy.com/

http://tutsplus.com/

Edit: Forgot http://www.codeschool.com/

...and probably half a dozen more that I can't think of off the top of my head.

I've just been using a google doc to stay organized, but this looks like it would work a lot better, and I would love to see some comparisons between equivalent courses on different sites.

hv23
Comparing equivalent courses is a great idea- we think there's a lot of valuable metadata to be gathered about each course/piece of content out there, and among other things want to allow people to use that info to find and sort the best material for them.

We'd love to hear how Polymath stacks up vs. your google doc :)

cellularmitosis
On the note of comparing equivalent courses, I've just started going through "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs", and I'm attempting to simultaneously go through all of the major courses based around it simultaneously.

First, there's the book itself: http://sicpebook.wordpress.com/ebook/

There's the Abelson / Sussman lectures from 1986: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE18841CABEA24090

There's UC Berkeley CS 61A, for which at least 4 semesters of full lectures are available: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3E89002AA9B9879E http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD7B8D6A4834C14C8 http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6879A8466C44A5D5 http://academicearth.org/courses/the-structure-and-interpret...

And there's also the ArsDigita University course from ~2000: http://aduni.org/courses/sicp/index.php?view=cw http://www.archive.org/details/arsdigita_01_sicp

And the SICP wiki is useful for when you get stuck: http://sicp.org.ua/sicp

The comments on amazon.com for the book are interesting. The first is from Peter Norvig, and the second from Paul Graham! http://www.amazon.com/Structure-Interpretation-Computer-Prog...

ABS
bravo! this is something a friend and I have been discussing on and off for more than 3 years, good that someone actually is doing it (rather than just talking ;-D).

Break a leg

ABS
but.... facebook login only :-(
mtrn
It's stated, that it's FB-only for now. Made me left the page, though.
ABS
I know it's stated, doesn't change the fact though
hv23
Thanks! And yes, apologies about the Facebook-only login for now.
johnnyn
This is great. When I first learned web development, I found it pretty hard to figure out which tutorials were best and which ones were a waste of time. This would have helped a ton.
seansu4you87
Wow, this site has great design. This would've been perfect when I was first learning.
hv23
Thanks! We're hoping that people on HN pay it forward and help new learners by sharing resources that they found useful when they were first learning.
ChankeyPathak
There is no need, many online tutorials' sites are there. You will end up just by adding an another site on the stack.
thekungfuman
This looks great, but (as many others have stated) the Facebook only login is a deal breaker. I'll check this out as soon as there is another method, which I hope is soon.
msutherl
As far as front-end web development is concerned, I was in a similar boat – not sure what was the best place to start learning 'everything'.

Then I found a copy of _Javascript: The Definitive Guide_ and it solved the problem. The book has everything in it, Javascript, HTML5, CSS, Node, JQuery, Ajax, etc. I spent one evening skimming through it and now I have a solid foundation. Now all I need are docs and Stack Overflow.

OTOH, though _The Guide_ is full of "best practice" tips, they evolve so quickly that this is something I'd like to see curated. Psyched to check out this website.

For design, especially UX/IxD, there are a number of 'guide' type books, but there's something fussy about design that makes it less amenable to being contained in book like that. I think it's very important in design to be constantly exposing yourself to new information.

I'm still looking for a good graphic design basics book.

hv23
You're right - this works especially well for areas with ever-evolving resources and best practices, like web design or HTML5 development.

A feature we're planning to implement soon is the ability to request specific resources that others can add.

aarondf
The first course I went to was actually a book. Maybe move the books to a totally separate section? I was excited about learning about designing visual interfaces only to be presented with an amazon link.
hv23
Good call! I can see that being a big buzzkill.
asawilliams
nice job, but you might want to optimize your landing page. Some of the images you are using are way too big, bloated css and js. I had to download 1.72MB just to view this page. Other than that this looks like a great product.
sidcool
I am not comfortable with logging in with FACEBOOK account. Create a custom login, please.