Future Courses Improvements Discussion Thread

[PatrickAlphaC]

Not saying I'm going to be making another course anytime soon, but if I were... How would we make that next one even better? Let's focus on general programming overall improvement points rather than specific ones to solidity, like "More lessons" and not "deeper dive on opcodes"

💪 We will follow the "Start, Stop, Continue, Improve" model.

Start

What are we missing? What should we have done in the course?

• Have a version of the video where each section is it's own video.
• Place on udemy or other course / framework
• Add challenges or "extra credit" sections for people to pause the video and do a challenge or exercise themself
• Explain how documentation is setup, for example:

provider.getCode( address [ , blockTag = latest ] ) ⇒ Promise< string< [DataHexString] > >

This is really confusing!

• At the start of each lesson, give the brain like a "primer" of what we are going to be building this class
• Teach how to read documentation, errors, etc. For example.

Stop

What did we do that we shouldn't of? What was annoying?

• Naming variables the same name as types, example: of what not to do:

People public person = People("Person", 7);

Instead do:

People public myPerson = People("MyName", 7);

• Editing it yourself 😅

Continue

What should we continue to do? What are the good parts of this?

• All code examples on github
• Detailed install of tooling sections (how to install nodejs, git, etc)
• Intro / Motivational start / Why are we here
• Encourage participation throughout the course in the discussions, both to ask AND answer
• Encourage breaks and pacing yourself

Improve

What did we do that we could have done a better job of?

• More troubleshooting sections. Places of the video that are like "here are some common issues people run into"
• Section on formatting code in questions, and how to ask questions. That section feels a little rough still, could be better.
• Languages / Subtitles
• Intro Length should be more condensed
• Point out more tips and tricks for watching a long video, keyboard shortcuts, gear icon for speed, etc
• Understanding testing... Javascript syntax is really hard.

Please feel free to comment!

[othaime-en]

Sounds like a plan :)

[deutschluz]

So I'm about to start lesson 6 and you should know that I m a linux user and generally fluent in several programming languages. So I make this criticism because it annoyed me that you didnt mention it. So you did NOT explain what commands at a shell are. I feel this is a huge oversight for non-programmers who are used to point-clicking everything. You should have taken like 5 minutes to explain what a line at terminal like: "$ node program.js" is doing.

I would explain it like this: your terminal is a programming environment; it works by reading your commands one line at time. The first word you type at terminal is usually an app and then the shell goes about looking for that word in these standard places called user path and system path. When it finds that word it feeds the second word into that app. if it doesnt find that first word you get an error response that explains the situation.

Thats it. Seems pretty simple to me. I should say at this point that I m really enjoying the course and clearly a lot of ppl put a lot of effort into organizing this course. Great Job Patrick and everyone else involved.!!

[Stark-Code]

I feel like there could be lengthy discussion about how to utilize the documentation for various tools or languages being taught in a course. For instance in the ethers documentation
provider.getCode( address [ , blockTag = latest ] ) ⇒ Promise< string< [DataHexString] > >
I know what parts of this mean, but parts of it I do not understand the syntax. So teaching how to read/navigate documentation would be awesome. Also learning how to use the documentation. For instance if there is some functionality that I'd like to add to my application, but I have know idea how to go about doing it... how might I use the documentation to figure it out?

[DorianDaSilva]

Ture, documentation sometimes gets confusing & I agree that going through the thought process behind the syntax helps a lot cementing the information (The logic) but must admit that I have learned tons so far & going back on lessons I noticed that I understand what is being said and the logic behind it but not sure I would be able to reproduce all of it on my own yet. (Logic and thought process would help a lot with that as it turns coding into a dialogue with the machine)

[PatrickAlphaC]

Great feedback!

[krakxn]

That's a great idea. I can see beginners omitting documentation just because it is so overwhelming. You get used to it w/ time though.

[DorianDaSilva]

I personally would love a course (Or several mini courses)

• 100% Web3 development oriented
• How to create LP farms, staking, Liquidity pools, cross chain bridges, aggregators...
  (Not sure if this is covered further in the Defi section of the course)
• Web3 security
• Wallets
• ICOs
  etc...
  In other words how to build anything and everything on the blockchain :D

[krakxn]

For the ICOs part, it is hard for major CEXs unless you are offered to, which is unlikely.

Minor exchanges are usually exploited w/ pump and dump or vapourware projects, so retail is unlikely to provide liquidity—especially heightened from the 2021 bull run, people are slowly maturing in this market, especially w/ TradFi influence—unless you build a solid protocol, of course. At that point, congratulations.

(Please never create something like it. We should strive to create useful, impactful things)

[LordReya]

I would love to see some exercises and more practical tasks, especially for beginners that have a though time with coding and understanding it. The tasks should be relatively easy in the beginning and harder in the end of course. We had some suggested tasks that you made up in the last course, however it was ultra hard to understand what you want us to do exactly. A coding noob is scared to test out if it's too complicated, or he doesn't know where to start (I'm one of them). So giving detailed and easy to understand instructions + a guided solution at the end of the section will for sure encourage beginners. Giving them a timestamp for the task would also help. So we don't end up being stuck on one simple task for hours.

[krakxn]

I think—more so than a detailed explanation/analysis—it is much better to just give the general overview before the start of a lesson, then give beginners some time to develop an algorithm of how they can possibly do that specific thing. (with things they might not know—libraries etc.—as hints)

Then, Patrick could show his algorithm as to how to do it.

Extensive algo. seems much better than wasting time dissecting every part of the codebase.

[DorianDaSilva]

Additionally, maybe having all of the links for documentation together in a section.

for example:

• ethers docs => Home page link + All links from the course & topic

I save all links as I go but then have to go through all the links I paste in my docs or sort them through bookmarks

Course is super complete but this kind of things could make it very easy to just look it up inside a pdf or such.

[krakxn]

Seems doable. However, I feel like having people search things up themselves gives them the relevant experience for when they have to diagnose problems by themselves.

[cipher222]

Not a suggestion about what to improve, but you should consider doing a course on interacting with the Lense Protocol. I have been messing around with it now that I have finished your course and think It could be a more advanced course for people to build on what they learned in this couse.

[adityabhattad2021]

Maybe Some projects with Lens Protocol :)

[adityabhattad2021]

If you could bring more of different creators in one courses that would be awesome as well, as we might get to learn different approaches to write the code.

[Jlavezzi]

Hy everyone.. I am just two hours+ into the course and I am feeling kinda dazed.. I mean confused.. meanwhile I have a little knowledge of JavaScript... Will it get better as I advance. I have problems understanding those data types and syntax.. thanks 👍

[adityabhattad2021]

It will get better as you advance and get more and more familiar with the code,and if you get stuck on any problem don't worry there is entire community to help you :)
But still you can do small vanilla js and node projects, that will also help.

[krakxn]

@Jlavezzi Please go through a vanilla JavaScript course, else you might not understand things later on as they get progressively harder.

But, if the doubt revolves around web3 libraries, then it will get better progressively as you grasp more so of them.

[Jlavezzi]

Thanks@krakxn

[ippy1997]

its a great course with a lot of information's , but i think it is not beginner friendly as it progresses especially when getting into hardhat and ethers.js , i have all the basics of java-script and i found most of the things confusing when it comes to testing and mocks , we get less explanation of why we are using certain things , im on lec 7 and i barely understand the js code in hardhat i get some of it , but i think most of the issues are in with the web3 libraries some terms and certain practices that im not familiar with gets me to think if i should stop and learn more from other sources and come back or i should keep going and it'll get more clear , overall i appropriate what Patrick is doing but the course could've been more beginner friendly.

out of topic
I think including some tasks for us to do in the course , like you can show us how to do it and give us a task to do and then come back to check if we did it right like scrimba academy idk if you guys are familiar with it , i think engaging the students would help us be more creative and give us a good idea of how to approach problems and think better.

ALL THE BEST

[ippy1997]

i could agree that making the learners search by themself gives them a good understanding , but for beginners you could get lost and not know where to go , especially when you are new to programming and don't understand the development cycle or the way you should plan and make your project , i took many breaks to go and learn some things and came back to the course which is a good things , but at the same time it would've been better if it was mentioned , over all its great but when it comes to web 3 libs it gets very overwhelming ,but maybe im still early when the course progresses things will get more clear

[krakxn]

Patrick did provide necessary resources in the GitHub repo though, so as to not be lost.

Also, discussions are pretty active for user-specific issues. I cannot see how a beginner can get lost as of now at least.

Besides the above reply of mine—which would have been a significant QoL change for beginners—I think resources were sufficient.

[ippy1997]

### ok

[PatrickAlphaC]

I like your feedback @ippy1997. I'm going to add that!

Glad you like my current approach @krakxn! Just remember everyone has a different learning style, and sometimes what worked for you won't work as well for someone else.

[ippy1997]

@PatrickAlphaC Thanks for the response , overall Patrick you are a great teacher and the effort you put into making this course is beyond amazing , would like to thank you for your time and efforts into making this.
wish you all best

[alkali333]

I have just finished lesson 6. This course beats any paid one I have ever taken. Saying that, it's kind of daunting having the whole thing as single YouTube video, this course would work perfectly on an Udemy type platform.

I love the way you explain basic coding concepts, even though this though this is course on cutting edge, advanced tech. I am very rusty with JavaScript and a lot of the syntax you use is new to me. But you explained it so that, even if I couldn't get my head around the syntax, I still knew what each bit of code was for and why it was needed. That way the knowledge would still seep into my subconscious. I also love how you make sure people understand what is going on behind the scenes (like doing the ethers.js stuff before moving on to hardhat).

Still, I nearly had a brain hemorrhage when we got to the testing part of lesson 6. It seemed like a bit of a sudden jump because the testing syntax was quite challenging for me (the special describe function that takes anonymous function that contains all those "ifs"). This was hard enough for me to understand, but then using all that code to test the solidity code... just looking at that stuff caused me to go cross-eyed and start doubting my sanity. It got me so confused, I woke up at night thinking thinking my head was a JavaScript function and my pillow had been deployed to a blockchain. But thankfully, I survived this code-induce psychosis and am looking forward to lesson 7.

I'd love to see some exercises where we have to write some code rather than just follow on with you. But I can see how that would be hard to do with a course that is so beginner friendly.

[PatrickAlphaC]

I woke up at night thinking thinking my head was a JavaScript function and my pillow had been deployed to a blockchain.

I chuckled at this lol.

Thanks so much for this feedback. Yeah, I think exercises are a really good suggestion, and a lot have suggested it. I agree on the testing part too, there is a lot there, so doing something to make that easier... Thanks!

[mattaereal]

Maybe it does not apply to what you're looking for, and it may be an unpopular opinion, but I would probably reinforce some things as general advice.

In order not to duplicate the information, I already shared some of this general idea here. Hope its useful!

[growindiedev]

• Add challenges or "extra credit" sections for people to pause the video and do a challenge themself
  It would be great if you could make do-it-yourself challenges (projects) for each section. Ask the audience to complete those projects on their own; if they need help, they can discuss them in the community. A great example is The Odin Project [ https://www.theodinproject.com/ ]. You can include a capstone project that people need to build on their own in order to graduate from the course, This would solidify the learning. I think the Assignments are super important.

[krakxn]

Ethernaut is a fun one, the Austin Griffith one is good too.

Also (sorry if you already know this): there were QR codes between subsequent lessons if you were attentive. Whilst I cannot attest to the difficulty of them—as I did not partake in it—they test the contents respective to the specific QR code.

Besides the course: By the way, there are sooo many good reads—includes articles, blogs etc.—now that you will always have resources to further improve your knowledge.

[iamefe]

Love the transparency!

[AhmedAdemola]

This is lovely