- So is it reasonable to expect to pay nothing
for a programming course?
Either by getting a free coupon
or by, perhaps, pirating the course?
Let's talk about that in today's video.
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(upbeat music)
Welcome back, my name is Tim Buchalka,
with another programming tip of the day,
and we're talking about getting things for free,
whether it's okay to get that.
And the example I'm using is programming courses,
but this could be a movie, a game,
or whatever it is.
Is it okay to do that,
either by getting a free coupon, or pirating it,
or should you really be paying for that
and investing in your future?
So hopefully, I've already given you the answer, there,
because I think that you should be investing
and basically paying for something,
because you tend to be more proactive
and use something that you pay for.
Now, I'm not gonna go into the pros and cons of piracy
because I think that's fairly cut and dry,
but, you know, if someone's created something,
in my opinion, you shouldn't be downloading
and using that illegally.
Again there, the word illegal I guess is a bit,
is something that people can take a different way
because it's copyright infringement
as opposed to being illegal, etc.
I'm not gonna get into that, it's a bit of a grey area.
The point I'm saying here is,
that there's opportunities for you to get something
for free, or to pay for it.
Now which way should you go?
Now my reasoning, again, is that if you pay for something
you're far more likely to use it.
And I know that there's people out there who,
and I'm using Udemy as an example here,
who grab lots of courses and get free coupons
so they end up with hundreds of courses
in their accounts, their Udemy accounts,
and they never go through them.
Now why don't they go through them?
Because essentially they're free,
and by not paying for something, really it's the value,
it's the implied value is what you paid for it,
in this case nothing, and they'll never get used.
So I think for that reason alone,
that's a good reason for you
to consider paying for a course,
because you tend to, if you pay for something,
you wanna get value from it,
and you want to work at it,
and to get that value from something by paying for it.
But of course there's another angle as well,
and I wanna talk about that,
and that's if you are right
getting something for free either with a coupon,
this is now less about coupon and more about piracy.
If you're downloading a course illegally,
you really need to look at that from the point of view
of what is happening for the person
who's created that content.
Now if you use an example, well, with my courses,
I've spent literally hundreds of hours of my time
creating courses and updating them
and supporting them and so forth,
and for someone to come along and to grab that
and just assume it's okay
to download it and start using it for free,
I like to use the analogy of looking at other things
on our planet. So for example,
let's look at buying shares.
If you go buying shares,
if you decide you want to invest in the stock market,
do you go to the stock market and say,
"Can I have the profits now please,
and I'll pay you later for the shares"?
No, you need to pay for the shares first, don't you,
I mean, you pay for the shares
and you hope to make a profit.
Generally speaking, when you go into a store
to buy something you don't get
the goods first and then pay later.
Of course you can with some sort of credit card,
or some sort of repayment schedule,
but the bottom line is you're still committing
to paying something.
And I think that it's really a mindset,
to get into the right mindset, here,
is to position yourself, and think,
"Okay, I need to invest in myself.
So I need to buy a course, and I need to invest
in that course, invest in myself,
invest in my future."
And, you know, the courses on Udemy
are so inexpensive, I mean compared
to when I started out learning to programme
all those years ago, there was very few resources,
or the resources that were there were phenomenally expensive
in relative financial terms to what they are today.
These days you can get a course so inexpensively
on Udemy that it's not really a great burden
for most people to find the money for that.
I mean, maybe you need to go without something,
turn off the Netflix account for the month
to pay for the course, or whatever it is.
But the point is not just the money side of it,
though that is certainly an angle,
but it's also setting yourself up by saying,
"Look, okay, I'm gonna invest in my future,
I'm going to pay for whatever I need."
And whether that's paying for an IDE,
if you decide to get the professional version
of say IntelliJ IDE, pay for a course, or courses,
from a reputable instructor,
and pay for a computer that you're gonna use
to programme on, and so on and so forth.
Now this is really the point I'm making,
is you're investing in yourself,
and I think it's a false mindset
to be looking for free things.
And I'll be honest with you now,
I get requests from students to send them free coupons,
you know, to basically send them a free coupon
so they can get the course for nothing,
and a common argument is,
"Look, I can't afford it now,
once I get a programming job then I'll repay you."
And again that is backwards thinking
because you're looking to get the reward,
the reward for something before you've actually
put in the hard work. So you need to invest,
again, the analogy of the stock market,
you need to actually invest by purchasing some shares
before you can hope to get a return.
In most shops you usually need to pay for something
before you get the goods.
And it's the same thing with a course,
or most things in life, you need to put in time in some way,
or put in money first to get that reward.
So I'm using this analogy of paying,
but this also applies to your future as well,
and I've talked about this on this channel before,
about investing your time to get a return.
And you need to invest a substantial amount of time
in some cases, to become a great programmer,
it takes time to do that,
and by persisting and working at it,
and continually applying your time towards something,
that's how you achieve success.
So I just wanted to put that out there,
and I'm certainly not aiming this video
at any person in particular,
'cause I know piracy happens,
I mean, I'm a realistic person,
I know that these things happen,
but if you're thinking of doing that,
just think through the ramifications to yourself
that are you gonna value something really
that is free that you've downloaded,
or if you've actually invested in something,
you've paid for something,
I think you'll find that more than likely
you will work harder at that knowing that,
"Okay, I put this money towards this course"
or whatever it is, "I need to work on this,
I need to work on myself,
I need to invest in my future, to make this work."
So that's my recommendation, is to pay for anything
of value that you're learning,
whether it's a course, an ebook, a boot camp,
or whatever it is, anything that's using
and helping you to succeed in your goals,
you should really pay for that.
You're paying for someone's expertise
to put together material to help you,
ultimately, succeed in life.
And look, the good thing about programming,
of course, is it can give you a fantastic
return on the time and money that you have spent,
by way of actually a great programming job
and a great salary.
Alright, that's it, that's my rant over for today,
I'm open to comments, so do you agree with what I've said,
or do you disagree? Feel free to leave a comment,
and let's have a discussion about it.
Alrightey, so I hope that helped,
if you've got any questions,
feel free to leave a comment and I'll get back to you.
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click on up here, and you can check that out.
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