8+ Great Websites to Learn New Tech Skills During the Covid-19 Pandemic

If we’re stuck at home, we may as well be productive

10 min readDec 19, 2020

The current situation with COVID-19 is rather severe. It has led to a period of serious self-reflection, especially for people like me who work in cushy tech jobs.

But since many of us are lucky people who can be stuck at home and be OK, we may as well spend this time productively and improve our skills.

At the end of the day, I believe in humanity’s tenacity and that we will survive this. So we need to prepare ourselves for a return to normalcy. If we stagnate and don’t improve for several months, we’ll be dead in an entirely different way once the world recovers.

I’ve previously written an article on Free (and Paid) Education Resources For Software. This article is more focused on people who already work in the industry and want to expand their skills.

Here is a list of 8 online courses or websites that can help you improve or learn new skills.

1. Pluralsight

Pluralsight is a technology and multimedia-focused online learning platform. All of its courses are edited and vetted for production quality, leading to many courses that are of higher quality than most other generic online platforms.

You can find individual courses for almost every software language or tool you can imagine. You can also find various learning paths as well as skill tests to gauge your level in a particular path.

Pros

Tech-focused.
High production quality.
Large variety of languages and tools, with entire paths dedicated to learning them.

Cons

Learning paths have courses with overlapping, repeated content.
Some courses are outdated and don’t look like they’ll be updated soon.
Seems Microsoft-centric.

2. Katacoda

Katacoda is a free, interactive, and tool-based learning platform. What makes it unique is its built-in shells in the web browser, where you can read prompts and click-through tutorials while actually running commands in a real terminal side-by-side.

The lesson will spin up instances in the cloud and you can immediately observe the fruits of your lessons.

Katacoda was recently acquired by O’Reilly.

Pros

Free.
Built-in Terminal and remote cloud environment for integrated learning side-by-side — learn by doing.
Great variety of tools, with a continually growing arsenal.

Cons

Some of the scenarios aren’t very well fleshed out.
Not great for cohesive learning paths or complete end-to-end education of a topic, better for learning very specific scenarios.
No languages or frameworks/libraries — only specific tools and overarching practices.

3. Scotch.io

For front-end and web developers, Scotch.io is a great resource to improve your knowledge or learn some new frameworks and tools. There are courses on there for all of the major front-end frameworks (e.g. React.js, Vue.js, Angular, Laravel, etc.) and various other tools, libraries, and concepts.

It’s the perfect website for people who want to break into web development or learn a specific topic.

Pros

Free.
Some of the courses and content have great depth and are long.
A large variety of different courses due to a large number of contributors and instructors.

Cons

Front end specific.
Some of the content is of questionable quality and consistency depending on the instructor.
Courses are very scenario-specific (e.g. Routing Angular Applications) and there’s no overall path/cohesion.

4. Udemy.com

Udemy is a popular, generic online learning platform housing a variety of different courses and topics.

You’ll find anything from tech, to finances, to art and creative disciplines, etc. In addition, Udemy courses are on sale for virtually half the year, so you can buy most of your courses for only $10-$20.

The biggest downside is that there doesn’t appear to be a team that vets the content. It’s a neutral online platform, so there are people who are allowed to sell extremely questionable courses (e.g. fortune-telling, mind-reading).

Pros

Cheap.
Huge variety, anything from a cohesive learning path (e.g. Complete Web Developer Course), to certifications (e.g. AWS Associate Architect), to specific tools in specific scenarios (e.g. Docker Mastery with Swarm and K8s)
Depending on the course, there can be a ton of depth and length to the content.

Cons

Some courses are of questionable quality and content. Teachers are not vetted for legitimacy or credentials.
Udemy is not tech-specific, so it may sometimes be difficult to find certain courses — potentially easy to fall for shiny object syndrome.
A lot of courses are taken by and aimed at complete beginners, so sometimes the pacing of courses can be slow for experienced tech learners.

5. edX

edX is a freeware online website containing courses from various top universities. The courses are primarily aimed at introductory, general computer science and programming concepts.

But they can be great for people looking to learn new programming languages or explore basics of a new topic (for example, an Intro to Python course by Microsoft or Intro to Cybersecurity by U of Washington).

Pros

Courses are long and in-depth.
High-quality courses taught by universities and large companies.
Completely free access to content, and with paid money, you have the opportunity to obtain degrees and professional certifications as well as access assignments/projects.

Cons

Some of the courses can be hard. They’re taught by engineers and professors, so sometimes the topics are not taught well.
No courses for specific tools and few courses for specific topics.
Courses are generally entry-level/introductory.

6. Coursera

Coursera is another online learning platform, similar to edX, with courses from various companies and universities on a variety of topics.

Users can pursue entire degrees and certifications, or just explore individual courses that cover specific topics.

Pros

Courses are long and in-depth.
High-quality courses taught by universities and large companies.
Depending on the course, many of these are paced appropriately for experienced learners rather than complete beginners.
Also free, with options to pay for certificates, etc. like edX.

Cons

Some of the courses can be hard. They’re taught by engineers and professors, so sometimes the topics are not taught well.
No courses for specific tools — only comprehensives topics and paths.

7. Codementor

Codementor is a live coding mentorship website which pairs you with an experienced engineer in a particular language or field.

Incidentally, they’re also a freelancer sourcing website that allows people to quickly find freelancers or freelancing opportunities in software.

Pros

You can find coaches for practically any language, framework, and topics you can imagine — the catalog is huge.
Live sessions with real coaches and mentors can answer specific questions and guide you to expertise faster — the experience is tailored.

Cons

Mentors charge different prices and some can be expensive.
Charged by 15-minute increments. Potentially expensive and wasteful depending on how you spend that time, so make sure you have all the materials and questions prepared before starting the meeting.

8. Bitdegree

Bitdegree is a learning platform that introduces a gamified learning system to help boost motivation.

Although it started off specifically aimed at tech and software, it has since expanded its course offerings to various topics like Productivity, Self-Improvement, Marketing, Finance, etc.

Imagine if Udemy focused more specifically on technology and professional skills and added gamification — that’s Bitdegree.

Pros

Tech-centric. You’ll find a variety of courses on many different topics.
The gamification aspect of the platform helps keep up the motivation for learning.
Also cheap.

Cons

Most of the videos are aimed at total beginners, with a few intermediate courses. Pacing of courses is fairly slow — overall, not great for experienced learners.
Most courses are for generic or overarching topics (e.g. Python, HTML5/CSS3, etc.) rather than specific tools and specific scenarios/practices.
Although its self-produced courses are high-quality (BitDegree Foundation VSI), it’s started accepting courses from miscellaneous authors, and some of the quality is not as great.

9. Other Mentions From Readers

Since this story was originally published on Medium, several people have responded below with more fantastic resources, which I’ll list here for readability. But I won’t be doing a full analysis of Pros/Cons of these.

Big thanks to: Mathew Thomas, Younès Benallal, Kiela Wambui, Melinda Noronha, and Riccardo Corradin for the other mentions.

Conclusion

The situation in the world is severe. It’s important not to go out if you don’t need to. It’s even more important that you limit contact with people to avoid infecting yourself and your loved ones.

Having said that, being stuck at home does not mean you need to be stuck in your career and current skillset.

Happy learning and programming!

8+ Great Websites to Learn New Tech Skills During the Covid-19 Pandemic

If we’re stuck at home, we may as well be productive

1. Pluralsight

Pros

Cons

2. Katacoda

Pros

Cons

3. Scotch.io

Pros

Cons

4. Udemy.com

Pros

Cons

5. edX

Pros

Cons

6. Coursera

Pros

Cons

7. Codementor

Pros

Cons

8. Bitdegree

Pros

Cons

9. Other Mentions From Readers

Conclusion

Written by Bokachusheik