an earnest review of the claude code course by every.to and dan shipper

I completed claude code course (claude 101, claude for beginners) by every.to (dan shipper) and want to give my candid, unfiltered thoughts for the people considering it.

context: I’m a complete beginner in claude but have been using LLMs since chatgpt launch (nov ’22)

The good:

It delivers on its essential promise: a course for absolute beginners where you will be up and running with two projects
lots of support and hand-holding (although your encouraged to self-troubleshoot to build the muscle, like many of us already do)
- I think this is the main value prop – like sitting down to get up and running in Claude with a friend working beside you to tap on the shoulder for help
If your in a legacy industry and your company is open to comping it, this will likely be a good use of time and money for you.
- If you aren’t resourceful or an autodidact, its a good investment (esp. if the alternative is trying it late because you’re intimidated by terminal).
You see what’s possible, if you have no idea which projects you can do

The not good:

its fairly rudimentary, even for complete beginner. you install Claude and have two lightweight projects which are essentially a couple of prompts to run
much of the learning is self-directed during free time and seeing other peoples builds/demos
- this means your experience hinges on your cohort and what you know/are willing to try
actual instruction is limited and maybe 20-30% of the course, a lot of free time to build with help and to watch demos, listen to questions
it leaves a lot to be desired, even for a one-day course
- no special set-up or hacks for saving tokens (you add a plugin but that’s it)
- better, more substantive projects that actually teach you something (the project is open-ended you could get as complex as you want but isn’t the point to distill this information in a digestible way?)
- no resources or projects to try independently after the course (again self-directed, go try your own projects…???)

closing thoughts

In the era of youtube and long-form blog posts the bar for information products is extremely high. You’re essentially paying for the time it would take you to find this information yourself and hand holding if needed. However, the information itself is not scarce and the projects aren’t elaborate or complex. You could spend 30 mins watching Claude’s own video on code and tinker through a blog post like this one in a couple of hours.

good free resources: