Add blog: Learn Scala with Online Courses

blog/_posts/2022-01-19-learn-scala-with-online-courses.md

@@ -0,0 +1,83 @@
+---
+layout: blog-detail
+post-type: blog
+by: Julien Richard-Foy, Vincent Derouand, and Valérie Pedroni (Scala Center)
+title: "Learn Scala with Online Courses"
+---
+
+Happy new year to everyone! We hope 2022 will be of great joy, and will be a 
+source of fruitful collaboration between the Scala Center and the community!
+
+As you might be listing your 2022 goals, why not include Scala in it? 
+Refresh your programming skills, acquire new knowledge, and get a new 
+certificate!
+
+In this post, we remind you of our online courses designed for both beginners 
+and experienced programmers, we report on what happened in 2021, and we share 
+our plans for 2022.
+
+## 2021 Retrospective
+
+In 2021, with the release of Scala 3 we updated nearly all of our MOOCs to 
+Scala 3:
+
+- [Functional Programming Principles in Scala],
+- [Functional Program Design],
+- [Parallel Programming],
+- [Programming Reactive Systems] with Akka.
+
+We also kept the Scala 2 versions of these courses online, but we observed 
+that the majority of the learners took the Scala 3 versions (e.g., 97% in the 
+case of Functional Programming Principles in Scala).
+
+The only courses that still use Scala 2 are the courses that depend on Spark,
+which does not yet fully support Scala 3 (see below our plans in this regard).
+
+We also published a new course: [Effective Programming in Scala]. This 
+course teaches programmers all they need to be ready to work in Scala.
+We are proud to report that this course was one of the [100 most popular 
+courses of the year 2021][rank] (out of the 2900 courses created in 2021 on 
+various MOOC platforms). Thanks to Effective Programming in Scala, we believe 
+that hiring should not be a concern for companies using Scala.
+
+In total, in 2021, more than three thousand people completed a Scala online 
+course! Thank you to them for trusting us as their teachers, and 
+congratulations on acquiring new knowledge!
+
+Finally, we have recently re-organized the website to have a
+[dedicated page](https://docs.scala-lang.org/online-courses.html) presenting 
+the Scala courses from the Scala Center. We also published a short video 
+summarizing the main points:
+
+<div style="text-align: center">
+  <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/rRCdnTspE_k" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
+</div>
+
+## Plans for 2022
+
+In 2022, we plan to update the Spark courses to Spark 3.2 and Scala 3:
+
+- [Big Data Analysis with Scala and Spark],
+- [Scala Capstone Project].
+
+Additionally, we plan to experiment with alternative online learning models.
+So far, all our courses are self-paced and the assignments grading is fully 
+automated. This model is perfect for autonomous learners, but we believe 
+there is also a need for a complementary model, where learners would get 
+code reviews from experts, and one-to-one sessions with instructors. This 
+year, we plan to publish some of our courses under such a complementary model.
+
+## Acknowledgements
+
+The Scala Center is committed to providing high-quality, free, Scala 
+educational material. We are grateful to all the learners who pay to get
+certificates of completion. Our work would not be possible without your support.
+
+[Functional Programming Principles in Scala]: https://coursera.org/learn/scala-functional-programming
+[Functional Program Design]: https://coursera.org/learn/scala-functional-program-design
+[Parallel Programming]: https://coursera.org/learn/scala-parallel-programming
+[Programming Reactive Systems]: https://coursera.org/learn/scala-akka-reactive
+[Effective Programming in Scala]: https://coursera.org/learn/effective-scala
+[Big Data Analysis with Scala and Spark]: https://coursera.org/learn/scala-spark-big-data
+[Scala Capstone Project]: https://coursera.org/learn/scala-capstone-project
+[rank]: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/most-popular-free-online-courses/