Brush up on your Languages with Pluralsight

Over the last year not only have I created a number of courses for Pluralsight, I’ve also watched a lot too. Most of the time, I’m not watching to learn a brand new technology, but as a refresher for something I’ve already used a bit. Often in just an hour or two (on 1.3x playback) you can watch a whole course and pick up loads of great tips.

I’ve found it a particularly effective way to brush up on my skills in a few programming languages that I’m semi-proficient in, but not completely “fluent” in. So here’s a few programming language related courses that I can recommend:

First, last year I was glad I watched Structuring JavaScript by Dan Whalin, as I had been hearing lots of people talking about the “revealing module pattern” and “revealing prototype pattern” but hadn’t yet properly learned what those patterns were. He explains them simply and clearly.

Another great course is Python Fundamentals by Austin Bingham and Robert Smallshire. It’s been a number of years since I did any serious Python development, so my skills had grown a bit rusty. This superbly presented course is a brilliant introduction to Python, and filled in a couple of gaps in my knowledge. They’ve got a follow-up course out as well which is undoubtedly also worth watching.

Third, several times over the years I’ve tried and failed to get to grips with PowerShell. The Everyday PowerShell for Developers course by Jim Christopher was exactly what I needed as it shows how to do the sorts of things developers will be interested in doing with PowerShell.

And finally, the F# section of the Pluralsight library is still small, but growing fast, and one fascinating course was Mark Seemann’s Functional Architecture with F#. It’s fast-moving but gives fascinating insights into how you could architect a typical line of business application in a more functional way.

Anyway, that’s enough recommendations for now. I have several other courses I want to highlight, so maybe this will become a regular blog feature. Let me know in the comments if there are any must-see courses you’ve come across.