Does anyone use Packt or other online learning subs?

ic1male

ic1male

ic1male

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I've seen a couple of bundles of Packt stuff in Fanatical/Humble which led me to look at their site. Seems quite good - for a monthly sub of £16.99, you can read and watch as much content as you like. Just wondering if anyone here subscribes and what you personally think of it.
 
ic1male said:
I've seen a couple of bundles of Packt stuff in Fanatical/Humble which led me to look at their site. Seems quite good - for a monthly sub of £16.99, you can read and watch as much content as you like. Just wondering if anyone here subscribes and what you personally think of it.
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Packt books are pretty good in general and the Humble Bundle deals are well worth getting. If I had the money I'd subscribe to Packt on their website to get access to all of their eBooks.
 
Thanks. I've also seen something called "Zero to Mastery" but it's £40 per month so quite expensive. However, I can't see a single review saying anything bad about it. Will definitely investigate it further to see what courses they offer.
 
ic1male said:
Thanks. I've also seen something called "Zero to Mastery" but it's £40 per month so quite expensive. However, I can't see a single review saying anything bad about it. Will definitely investigate it further to see what courses they offer.
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Another option is Brilliant.org.

But depending on how you learn best a £20 subscription to Packt Pub will give you online access to all their books so you'll have an extremely wide variety of topics to learn. There are other places to subscribe to as well depending on what you want.
 
Sorry to be contrary but other than usually being very up to date, Packt are almost without question terrible for quality. They are the buzzfeed/gawker of IT publishing with a rush to get to print (or pixel) above all else.

Manning / Oreilly, Pearson all far better.
 
Good shout about O'Reilly. They seem to have a monthly sub as well which gives access to some of Pearson's and Packt's videos. I'm going to join the ACM and get access to the skills bundle.
 
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I've taken out the 10-day trial just this week with O'Reilly Online and already I've learned so much from just one HTML video course. (Who would have thought Emmet abbreviations were the dogs! I've never heard of it before now.) It's actually by Packt but is available as part of the O'Reilly sub.
 
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Chaos said:
If you join ACM computing society for a year they have a skills bundle addon which you can pay for that lets you access content from O'Reilly, Skillsoft Percipio, and Pluralsight.

This discount link might still work, acm membership 75 usd and skills bundle addon is 75 usd so around £110 in total -


Acm home page -

Association for Computing Machinery

www.acm.org www.acm.org
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Just did this today - worked out about £115. Have no idea what the Percipio thing is, I'll consult Gemini on it later. But glad to have access to all the O'Reilly stuff (except the live lessons).
 
Oh I have free access to Percipio at work. O’Reilly Head First book on C# (second ed I think) was one of my favourite books for learning. I think that series in general is great.
No way I’d want to read on a screen though.
 
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Noxia said:
Oh I have free access to Percipio at work. O’Reilly Head First book on C# (second ed I think) was one of my favourite books for learning. I think that series in general is great.
No way I’d want to read on a screen though.
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Yes I did Head First Git so a big fan of anything with lots of illustrations :D. But primarily going to watch as much video as I can. Coding along with someone is more fun.
 
ic1male said:
Just did this today - worked out about £115. Have no idea what the Percipio thing is, I'll consult Gemini on it later. But glad to have access to all the O'Reilly stuff (except the live lessons).
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Know it is possibly too early to judge, but how happy are you with the extra content? It looks like both the Oreilly and Percipio is limited to some extent beyond what their respective plans offer, but I haven't found much detail on how limited.
 
IanAG said:
Know it is possibly too early to judge, but how happy are you with the extra content? It looks like both the Oreilly and Percipio is limited to some extent beyond what their respective plans offer, but I haven't found much detail on how limited.
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I'm not 100% sure what's missing on O'Reilly - definitely the live streams they do. As for Percipio, no idea what even to do with it. I think you get Codeacademy via that but don't know what that is either. :p

Having consulted Gemini -
O'Reilly is your "technical library" (books and videos), while Percipio is your "certification training center." Think of Codecademy as the "Duolingo for Coding."
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And with regards to what's missing -

1. Missing from O’Reilly (The "Live" Features)​

The biggest difference in the ACM version of O'Reilly is that it is a static library rather than a "live" one.

  • No Live Online Training: You cannot attend the live, instructor-led workshops where you can ask questions in real-time. (Direct subscribers pay $499 specifically for these).
  • No Interactive Labs/Sandboxes: O'Reilly has built-in "cloud playgrounds" where you can code in the browser with pre-configured servers. These are not included in the ACM bridge.
  • No "Superstream" Events: These are the big one-day virtual conferences O'Reilly hosts with tech celebrities.

2. Missing from Percipio (The "Management" Features)​

The ACM version of Percipio is designed for an individual learner, not a corporate employee.

  • No "Manager" Dashboard: You don't get the tools to assign courses to others or track a team's progress.
  • Limited "Expert Live" Mentoring: While the ACM bundle includes some mentoring, the direct "Enterprise" version of Skillsoft often has 24/7 on-demand chat with experts for every single course, which is scaled back for ACM members.
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Had a bit of a delve into Percipio. It's like information overload!!! Trying to match the stuff on there with what's on Codeacademy is a bit of a bugger though. It's like being in a sweet shop - ooh, Rust, I'll do some of that. Ooh, Python, I'll do some of that. And so on... :D
 
ic1male said:
Had a bit of a delve into Percipio. It's like information overload!!! Trying to match the stuff on there with what's on Codeacademy is a bit of a bugger though. It's like being in a sweet shop - ooh, Rust, I'll do some of that. Ooh, Python, I'll do some of that. And so on... :D
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Yeah that’s how you get nowhere. Source, got nowhere.
 
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