The O’Reilly School of Technology recently started offering a 4-part Python certificate course. I have just recently completed the first part of the course and wanted to share some of my impressions. The course is ‘cloud-based’ and served to you over an RDP connection. They provide you links to Mac OSX and Windows versions of the RDP client so either way you are covered. When you log in, you are dumped into the Eclipse IDE environment and walked through how to navigate the environment and set it up for your use. Love or hate Eclipse, you will be forced to use it through this course. I personally did not like Eclipse too much before I signed up for this course. Now that I’ve been using it a lot more I have decided it’s not so bad and I could probably grow to like it at some point. The further into the course you get, the more you realize why they made the decision to use Eclipse. Largely because it allows them to embed a web browser and they can run their other courses for Java, etc all off of Eclipse. Anyhow, enough about Eclipse…
My first impression of the course was not really so good. I kinda felt like I was just reading an abridged version of a $50 book. But after completing a few lessons I can see the value in essentially being forced to apply what you learn in each lesson. Is it worth the $300-$400($300 if you happen to catch it on sale)? Well that depends on your specific needs. If you want to go for the full certificate, you will spend $1200-$1600 because there are 4 separate courses you need to complete in order to obtain the cert. On top of that, there is a $15 monthly lab fee for using the system where the course is hosted. $1600 MIGHT be cheaper than your local university or perhaps your local university doesn’t even offer Python in the first place. I know some folks that were recently enrolled in a prominent local university’s Python course and they ended up feeling it was a complete waste of their time. Apparently the teacher kind of sucks. That’s good money down the drain unfortunately… Fortunately their employer is paying that bill. The OST course is nice because you can just try one module of it and if you don’t like it, don’t go any further. There is also a 7 day money back guarantee. Keep in mind that if you have completed more than 40% of the course in that first 7 days, you will no longer be eligible for the money back guarantee.
For me, I’m in it for the knowledge. I want to learn to be a better programmer and I think Python is a great language to help with that goal since it’s so deep and versatile yet simple enough to understand the fundamentals with a little bit of effort. If your company will pay for you to obtain a Python cert with O’Reilly, I would say go for it. No question. If it’s your own money you are spending, I would suggest trying to go through a book such as Learning Python by Mark Lutz
As far as specifics of the course, I felt that it started out with a slightly higher than beginner level. If you’ve never programmed before and never even tried to play around with Python, you might get lost in place. There is an instructor available via email but there is a lag if you are working on the course after business hours. The course makes a couple assumptions about prerequisite knowledge. My suggestion would be to at least skim a Python book even if you don’t punch in code out of the book as you read it.
I spent several weeks deciding whether I wanted to do this Python course. I discussed it over with a few friends and what finally convinced me to just give it a shot was the words of one person in specific…. “Well, it can’t hurt any now can it? It won’t make you any worse at Python, right?” True enough. In the end I definitely feel like I have a much deeper understanding of Python and I can now converse with other Pythonistas in a semi-coherent manner. So for me, yes, it was worth the $300. As an added bonus, you get a free ebook of one of their beginner Python books. For me it was “Head First Python by Paul Barry
Bottom line is that I’m happy with my purchase and would do it again given the choice. If you have completed this course yourself or are thinking about taking it, please feel free to post a comment down below. I would be interested in some additional perspective.
Now I wish they could figure out how to do one for developing iPhone apps 😉
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Greetings,
Thanks much for your review. I’m considering taking this course now (on-sale for $298) and stumbled upon this review.
Have you taken any of the follow-up courses?
Have you taken any other Python courses online? If so, were they better?
-Troy
I’m working on the second OST Python module right now but it’s been slow going for me because my time is limited and I’m having a tough time grasping the fundamentals of test driven development. It seems quite a bit harder to me but that’s not a bad thing really. I almost wish I could reset the 1st Python course and run through it all again first.
Thanks for the write-up. I went through the first two Python courses with O’Reilly and I can honestly say that it was the most fun I had with a programming language course. If you diligently follow the stuff, it is a solid reinforcement of fundamentals and you come out being rather unafraid of exploring the territory further. I highly recommend the approach they are using.
It’s a great course I agree. Unfortunately I keep getting bogged down in the 2nd one. Test driven development just isn’t sinking in for me yet. I’ll probably go back to it later after I’ve had some more experience with Python in the field. Also wish I could just reset the first one and go through the whole thing again and have it regraded, etc.
I recognize that this post is over a year old, but the classes are now $498 each (ouch!). Do you know of any discount coupons for the courses.
My advice would be to wait patiently and keep watching for a discount. They often mark down the courses dramatically. I don’t feel the course is worth $500/ea. Around $300 seems more fair. It’s funny though, I think I know python pretty well now overall but I still haven’t managed to muddle my way through the second course. Turns out that I really don’t need the knowledge to be an effective Python developer. It’s always nice to know and learn more but if you don’t use it, you won’t retain it anyhow.
You should decide something you want/need to DO in Python and figure out how to do it. My specialty is web scraping. So to get started, I write the module to actually scrape the page. Then I write the next module that will find and feed links into the scraper module. Then I write the one that will process the data that has been scraped. I make them ALL function as standalones for easy debugging and then I write code to tie them all together.
Which University program were you referring to here?
“I know some folks that were recently enrolled in a prominent local university’s Python course and they ended up feeling it was a complete waste of their time.”
UW
I have just completed the first section of the UW Python course. I thought it was a complete waste of time and money. I have also completed 3 of the 4 O’Reilly courses and thought they were well worth the money. I am bogged down on the 4th, but will finish.
I have had a miserable experience with the O’Reilly School since Day 1. The courses are comparable to every course you see on Udemy or Lynda, only 20 times the price. They have a lot of hidden things in their “Enrollment Agreement” that you will need to watch out for. You will also be liable for outrageous “lab fees”, which you cannot take the course without. I believe they are around $60 and you have a limited time frame to complete the course or you are withdrawn and you have to re-pay the $498. All around awful experience.
On one hand I appreciated the limited timeframe since it was motivation to get the course done. The lab fees are kind of dumb though. Now I would probably not recommend this course to most people. Reason being is that I finally got a good grasp on Python and I don’t feel like it was the course that did it. Practical experience is far more valuable. Set a goal and achieve it. If your goal is to finish a class, it’s the wrong kind of motivation. If you goal is to develop the next big exploit or framework, you’ll be self-motivated to learn the language. You’ll end up learning it inside and out in the course of using it and researching various functions.