Got a Pluralsight subscription for free through my university after graduation. I've found they are very good for training, meaning helping you understand how to use a specific tool or technology. Not as much for theoretical or high level CS like ideas, but more of I want to know how to program in lang X, using framework Y, or understand what I can do with the tech Z.
There is some of their content that is older. I worked with one of the original pluralsight authors they do require an audition and have a vetting process so it isn't just any random yahoo off the street who figured out OBS, generally the trainers are pretty knowledgeable.
One criticism I do have is that some of their content is a little bit stale, just keeping up videos and courses about how to program in Android from over 5+ years ago, or other tech that has changed rapidly.
I do love however how they create groupings of courses into "Tracks" that are intended to help go from basic understanding to conversational competence for an entire sector of IT, such as IS, Ops, Development, Cloud, etc.
A lot of positive comments about Pluralsight here so I thought I'd offer a slightly different perspective:
I had a subscription through work and was excited to jump in and learn as much as I could but I found the talks to be quite information-sparse when compared to say, destoryallsoftware.com [0] videos. As a result, I was apt to watch lessons at 1.5x speed in order to cover ground more quickly, which took a little getting used to.
I looked into why this might be, and discovered (at least back in 2015) that authors are paid in part, per minute of engagement [1], which might account in part for the length of the courses.
Judging from what I've read subsequently, I may just have been unlucky in the courses I selected (I didn't watch any Microsoft ones for example) so if anyone has any recommendations on particularly good courses, I'd be interested to give it a second try.
I had the same impression. They seem to have mandated structure that has bio, introduction, second introduction, introduction in each part and repeats the same thing over and over. And they make you sleep because they all talk so slow.
It is fine when you know absolutely nothing about the topic, but does not have good intermediate nor advanced topics.
Some (mostly java) videos did not seemed to have audience. For example, video is about setting up server and frontend with spring boot etc. And the video is explaining again and again how to make a class in eclipse. If someone cant make java class, they likely should not be learning spring framework just yet.
Pluralsight is amazing for those who are slightly advanced in a tech that Pluralsight focuses on.
They started as C# shop, basically teaching just C#, so that's gonna be their strongest game. But, they are really great at Java and JavaScript, Frontend, and recently DevOps.
I feel like the quality of their courses goes in the order I wrote above. DevOps courses are fine (though you'll be better served at LinuxAcademy, most likely). Java courses are excellent.
Pluralsight offering a free month is amazing. Most of their content is very high quality.
As a Pluralsight author [1] this makes me really happy! They've been (understandably) focusing on enterprises since the IPO, but it's great to see this gesture towards individual learners.
That's not really the case as far as I can tell. I had an old account from learning some of their complementary Azure content via Microsoft and I was able to enter my existing email id and activate the 30 day free content on my account.
I signed up for pluralsight thinking I would use if for a month and then cancel. I ended up coming back to it whenever I wanted to learn something new, from AWS services to Angular, the content is just more consistent than other services I have used. The introductory Angular course taught by Deborah Kurata was fantastic and her manner of teaching is unlike any I have seen in software, Yay!
I was asked to try it out at work as part of evaluating online learning platforms. I've maintained a personal subscription ever since. Must be going on 4 years now.
If you work with a Microsoft stack, Pluralsight is one of the best resources out there for rapid learning. The content is highly curated and the pedagogical quality is high. (another comment mentions that instructors have to audition: maybe this is why. Other platforms like Udemy are hit or miss.)
So I usually work on backend stuff (Linux) but some time ago I was tasked with writing an app with a complex UI in C#/.NET, which I had no prior experience with. I tried reading books but it was slow-going, because the Visual Studio environment is just that: visual, with lots of clicking on the screen.
I randomly stumbled upon Pluralsight's C# course (a limited Pluralsight subscription is bundled with every MSDN subscription): it was amazing. Screencasts made so much more sense than PDFs for something like Visual Studio. I found myself productive in C#/Visual Studio in just 2 weeks (caveat: I have a 15 yr programming background, just not in C#), and it took me another 2 weeks to finish the product. I breezed through courses in ASP.NET Core as well, and I'm now productive in that environment too. (As a Python veteran, I have to grudgingly confess that developing webapps in a statically typed language is so much more convenient and so much less error prone than in a dynamic one. Flask is a mess... a workable mess, but a mess nonetheless)
I don't know how polished their non-Microsoft materials are, but almost any course I've encountered on Microsoft-related technologies have been excellent. I'd especially recommend them to folks who don't really care to work with Microsoft tech (though C# is a truly pleasant language to work with -- designed by Anders Hejlsberg of Turbo Pascal and Delphi fame), but find themselves having to -- these courses will get you productive in no time. They're like a compressed signal to the brain.
I bootstrapped my C# knowledge into a programming career entirely off of Scott Allen's MVC 3 videos back in 2011/2012. He took the time to not just follow the project templates, but to start from empty projects and explain step by step what MVC's plumbing was doing. It was hugely eye opening and really removed a lot of the man-behind-the-curtain feeling of how that framework functions.
John Papa's videos also helped me understand a few new design patterns I'd never used, such as Unit Of Work and repositories. Even if you don't use those things, it's awesome to be able to recognize the pattern with others use them.
They went through a few expansion phases and merged / bought a couple other training companies into them, and their content really took off after that.
Now they have some great automated assessment programs that help focus your learning onto different tracks[1].
I haven't used their product in a couple years now as I've shifted into management and my organization has a lot of internal management training courses that will keep me busy for years. Still though, Pluralsight is where I go back to when I want to pick up a new specialist skill.
Full disclosure, I'm an employee / author at Pluralsight.
Yes, they vet the content. Authors themselves are vetted before becoming accepted and all content is reviewed for accuracy and quality.
For CS, we have a ton of great content. One of my favorites in that category is Algorithms and Data Structures Part 1/2. It's very thorough and easy to understand. There are also some CS courses that are geared towards specific languages like C++, F#, Python etc.
Heh, I probably would have said "Udemy style free for all" but the point is basically the same.
According to my email I signed up for a free trial a couple years ago, then closed my account when the trial ended. I don't recall the exact course(s) I tried, but in general they seemed like higher quality than the typical distance learning factories.
I know Nigel Poulton has some courses there on Kubernetes and Docker. Based on his books, and the audio adaptations of them, I expect his Pluralsight courses to be of high quality.
Depends what you mean by vet. I feel that they offer good content but once you reach advance levels of knowledge everything feels tailored to beginners or advanced-beginners.
This is my experience for their web content, nothing too in-depth really.
It doesn't really cover CS; you're better with Coursera for that.
Their .Net content, Angular content and Android content is of a very high quality. I wasn't so impressed with the Java content - but that might be more down to the subject matter. I'd probably have hated anything covering Webforms or WCF or other such monsters ;)
I hope that you get some value from it :) I enjoyed it and understand how Android works from a high level although I never went on to implemented anything on the platform :)
After reading all the praise here I signed up but even during redemption of this promotion (i.e. signing up) there was a message up that due to very high demand it may take a while to receive my signup email/redemption code.
I wonder if they will be able to meet the demand? (Might be hard, if they host their own videos.)
I've done some really good course on pluralsight (we had some form of enterprise license for a year), but other courses I've had to give up because of the grating accent of the person giving the course
Thick Indian accents? There are some fantastic programming tutorials on YouTube but unfortuantly the thick Indian accent makes them all most unwatchable.
Disappointed:
1. although I already have a (free) account, requires a new one
2. when I try to create a new account, rejects a completely valid email address
Should work with an existing account according to this official response on Reddit [1]. However, they seem to be overwhelmed at the moment so everything is taking longer (up to hours).
There is some of their content that is older. I worked with one of the original pluralsight authors they do require an audition and have a vetting process so it isn't just any random yahoo off the street who figured out OBS, generally the trainers are pretty knowledgeable.
One criticism I do have is that some of their content is a little bit stale, just keeping up videos and courses about how to program in Android from over 5+ years ago, or other tech that has changed rapidly.
I do love however how they create groupings of courses into "Tracks" that are intended to help go from basic understanding to conversational competence for an entire sector of IT, such as IS, Ops, Development, Cloud, etc.