Resources For Continuing Education

I am seriously considering signing up for paid membership in one of the online programming tutorial websites--lynda.com or teamtreehouse.com.

Why?

Video libraries. I learn faster watching than reading books or websites.

Lynda.com has a lot of videos for the stuff that I am looking for: ruby, ruby on rails, CSS, HTML5, Javascript, and C++. Teamtreehouse on the other hand, is more focused on web development.

They both offer the same monthly membership--$25. In fact, I already withdrew money from my poker account. The funds are going to be available next week.

What's holding me back is "information overload". I have a lot of ebooks that I can go through on my computer. There are several youtube videos that I still want to see. At the moment, I am concentrating on ruby + its web frameworks (RoR and sinatra), coffeescript and HAML/SASS.

I'm afraid that if I signed up with, say lynda.com, I'd end up spoon-feeding myself with those tutorials instead of following my interests/curiosity and learn-by-doing.

I don't think I "need" to sign up for membership. There are a lot of resources on the internet and they are for FREE. All I need to do is to be specific as to what I am looking for, and use Google.

My homework for now, are the following:

• Finish the three coffeescript ebooks that I have
• Finish Agile web dev book, learning Sinatra as I learn RoR
• Convert python games into Ruby
• Use HAML and SASS along the way

Here's what I'll do. I am going to finish these assignments no matter how long it takes. Soon as I finish them, I'll sign up for paid membership and see if I am missing out on anything.

Let's see what happens.