How to choose a good programming course on Udemy

The last decade has witnessed a tremendous rise in online learning, especially for programming courses. This is not surprising, considering that such courses offer an interesting, and far more useful hands-on approach as compared to the theoretical approach widely used in colleges. Leave alone e-learning platforms, there is a growing perception that even YouTube videos are a better guide for budding programmers than a college course or degree. I've come across many such comments in YouTube courses saying "This 15 minute video taught me more about the X programming language than 6 months at college". This is not to say that college courses/degrees are entirely useless - far from it - for many software engineering jobs, your resume will be discarded if you aren't a computer science/engineering graduate. But the growing importance of online learning in software engineering cannot be ignored anymore.

Udemy is among the leading e-learning providers, for many reasons such as its high popularity, wide range of courses, and for offering huge sales on its courses. This website also gives you a completion certificate after you successfully complete a course, which you may wish to present when applying for jobs. However, the wide range of courses on Udemy is both a boon and a curse. Newcomers to online learning are often left wondering if they should choose course A or B to learn a particular language. For instance, at the time of writing this article, a search for Java turned up about 10,000 courses on Udemy.

In this article I will give some tips for choosing a good programming course on Udemy from the available options. Please note that I am no expert on Udemy, programming or online learning; I am merely stating my own opinion based on my limited experience of completing 3-4 courses on Udemy. So, how should one choose a good programming course on Udemy? Let me show you!

1. Look at the ratings. This may seem obvious, but the best courses are highly-rated with four to five stars. But there is a catch here. A course with many ratings and a high overall rating is generally better than a highly-rated course with only a few ratings. This means that a Java course with 15,000 ratings and an overall rating of 4.5 stars is likely to be better than another Java course with only 25 ratings and an overall rating of 5 stars. I'm guessing the overall rating is the average of all the ratings.
2. Check if the course instructor is specialized in this programming language. While this is highly subjective, I personally feel that someone who is proficient in one language/technology stack is likely to be more knowledgeable than someone who offers various courses on many programming languages/concepts. For instance, if one wants to sign up for a .NET course, a course by an instructor who is proficient in the .NET stack is preferable to a course by another instructor who offers courses on many topics such as Java, .NET, Python, Data Science and Angular. I personally stay away from programming courses where the author's profile shows a focus on maximizing his/her income by offering courses in all "hot" topics.
3. Read the user reviews. It is not advisable to choose a Udemy course merely on the basis of its overall rating in stars. These ratings may be several years old, and the student may not have even completed the entire course when the rating was given, That's because Udemy prompts users to rate the course only after the first few lectures. So these ratings may not be a good indicator on course quality. Also, reading the user reviews may give you unique insights on the course, you hadn't even thought of. For instance, a review may state that the instructor's voice is very low which makes him/her hard to follow. Another review may state that the course is outdated and the code samples do not work with the latest version of the integrated development environment.
4. Find out how old the course is. While newer courses are not always better than older ones, an older course may have outdated information which may not work with the latest development tools. To give you an example, I was going through an ASP.NET MVC course where the instructor used an older version of Microsoft Visual Studio (2013) while the current version was of 2019. This forced me to redo the entire tutorial project right in the middle of the course, because the current version of Visual Studio had a different default authentication setting as compared to the 2013 version. If a course is outdated, it is likely to have a review saying so. If you are planning to sign up for a Udemy course to prepare for an IT certification (like MCSA or CCNA) , then an older course may be based on out-of-date curriculum.
5. Check the course prerequisites. This information should be available in the About this course section. Many programming courses need the student to be adept in basic programming skills or be well-versed in a particular programming language. For instance, a course in ASP.NET MVC may need prospective students to have basic HTML, CSS, JavaScript and JQuery knowledge. If you are not sure about the prerequisites of a particular course, feel free to drop a message to the instructor. If you do not get a response, consider this a red flag that the instructor is not keen to resolve queries and its best to look for another course.
6. Check the course content. Udemy displays the content of all courses so you can choose courses that serve your specific needs. Let's say you want to learn programming in C#, but also want the course to cover LINQ (Language Integrated Query). You can go through the course content prior to buying the course. If the course content does not mention LINQ, you can look for another course.
   

I hope this article helps you choose a good programming course on Udemy which serves your specific needs, gives you value for money and offers a good learning experience overall. When you complete a course on Udemy, please make sure to leave your own review so it can help other students in future. Good luck and have fun programming!