Udacity

Udacity is probably the second learning platform I stumbled upon after FreeCodeCamp and it changed learning for me forever. I have completed thoroughly, went halfway through, eighty percent completion..etc with a lot of free courses as per my needs in the industry. Be it learning sql or unix or simple python, while trying to shift gears from Manual to Automation testing, Udacity was always there with all the resources. Impressed with all its gifts of learning, I tried a bold step and invested in the Machine Learning Beginner course, completed it and was never more confident. It has been an awesome experience and a greater learning opportunity. I have accessed it on office computer, personal laptop and even sometimes on my mobile while trying to fall asleep just to watch the remaining lectures of any course that I may have signed up for earlier. The learning is still incomplete and the lessons and courses are still signed up for regularly. Hope to continue this journey and be a lifelong learner with Udacity. Best Regards.

I loved the program. The first 3 projects were very basic, but everything after project 4 was great. You get introduced to alpha research, portfolio optimization and backtesting.  In some of the projects you use Zipline, Quantopian's open source library.

 While of course, it's not expected for them to provide trading strategies to you, the applications of AI to trading seem relevant. You use neural networks, NLP, and random forests, among other models, in ways that are appliable to real trading research. 

Most of the instructors from Udacity do a very good job explaining the courses concepts, both theory and programming. The first 3 projects touch some subjects very briefly and without much depth, which was a bit disappointing, but understandable because of the breath of knowledge required for Quantitative Trading. The pace after project 4 picks up considerably though, and you get a challenging sequence with many subjects and approaches that were new for me, as well as suggestions to deepen your knowledge.

The instructors they brought from the industry were excellent too.

I spent two months doing udacity courses. Their free front end courses are pretty ok (Intro to HTML and CSS, Version Control with GIT, Shell Workhop, also intro to JavaScript). Once I began backend programs the quality took a nosedive. The free Intro to Backend class is incredibly dated and seems to have recieved only occasional bandaid attention over the last ten years (still using python 2.7). Their chatbot was super helpful in answering questions to figure out just how ot of date the course was. Also, exceedingly helpful on filling out details not covered in courses.

For paid content I only took the Full Stack Web Developer nanodegree program. Minor bug were frequent: most multiple choice quizes do not accept the correct answers (though there are links to test walkthroughs to review your own test), ran into some notes left inside course material for the udacity dev team. Most of all the course had been edited and reorganized so that instead of working with a program you've previously built and are familiar with to learn new material, you would actually work with an unfamiliar program that you have to cobble together without context by pausing videos at key moments to copy code. Also some sections of the course are referenced that nolonger exist (which I know becasue the chatbot told me, the chatbot is very helpful).

All in all, it's a gamble between getting a 4/5 class or a 2/5 class that's just very poorly maintained. 

Also poor customer service. After over a dozen bug reports I asked for a refund for the month that I was just a few days into due to all of the issues. Turns out they recieve any of the feedback via the "Give Page Feedback" form, and extended my access to the course i didn't want as a response.

Really bad experience with the mentor and customer supports. Whenever I hit a wall along my learning path, I never really had the support I was expecting from mentors. It blocked me several times when after having heard from a mentor that they would investigate and come back I would never hear from them. I have contacted the customer support twice about this particular problem and they said my case was reviewed again by the mentoring team. But again I never had a reply! 
Given that the price is per month this makes this extremely frustrating. I would really recommend to stay away from Udacity nanodegrees for that reason alone.