Moocha.io
Learning and science
course search engine
SHOW HN2017
231points
54comments
#120of 2,242 in 2017
Top 6%of 2017 by points
How HN took it
MixedNo clear lean
7 positive, 15 neutral or asking, 5 mixed, 10 critical, out of 37 comments about the project. Thread score -0.06.
Execution: 0 for, 7 againstPerformance: 4 for, 0 againstDesign: 1 for, 2 againstIdea: 1 for, 1 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Very fast page loads and search results
From 3 comments
Wow the speed is truly awesome - 125ms for the main page and 169ms for the search.
scadge on HNSeriously. It was so fast I was convinced it was precaching results as you type but it's not. Would love to read a write-up on this.
paulgb on HNI thought you and the other comments were exaggerating, but you're actually not. This feels impossibly fast from a user perspective. I'd love to see a write-up of this as well.
lovehashbrowns on HN
Simple, minimalist UI
From 2 comments
Helpful work. Simplistic UI and fast results. Would love to see some more websites like khanacademy, udemy etc in the results too. Some filters like cost/starting in/difficulty…
ankyth27 on HNI like the minimalism. Filtering is great, but more valuable when you know exactly what you want. That said, a (very) few filters for the most common reasons a searcher knows…
the_watcher on HN
Objections
Search results relevance is poor and fuzzy matching is too aggressive
From 4 comments
Had mixed results on my first two searches: "C#" returns C++ and Objective C classes, several ranked above actual C# classes. "Unity" as in the game engine, returns classes on…
WillPostForFood on HNNot sure the search algorithms are working as expected. Consider: https://ibb.co/iGQQPQ
hannofcart on HNThe autocorrect/fuzzy search is a little too aggressive. For instance searching for "PHP" or "REPL" yielded results with "PHD" and "Real..."
erikig on HNSimilar problem here: searched for "CFD" expecting to see hits related to Lorena Barba's excellent intro-level fluids courses and instead got hits for "CAD", "CFT", and "CFP".
na85 on HN
Violet background is aggressive
From 1 comment
Nicely done, might use that from time to time! I'd reconsider the violet background, it's a bit too agressive and I almost closed the page immediately.
mweibel on HN
Requests
Add filters such as free/paid, language, video lectures
From 4 comments
You might want to consider adding filters. We built an online MOOC directory, specifically for R courses (http://www.r-exercises.com/r-courses/), and noticed that the majority of…
rexercises on HNAnother filter I think is very important: only courses that have video lectures.
apetresc on HNAnother filter: language. Many people don't speak English. Maybe you can automatically detect the language and add to your list of languages as you go?
smartbit on HNI like the minimalism. Filtering is great, but more valuable when you know exactly what you want. That said, a (very) few filters for the most common reasons a searcher knows…
the_watcher on HN
Index more providers like Khan Academy, Kadenze, NPTEL
From 3 comments
How is there not any Khan Academy results in any of the searches?
dayaz36 on HNGreat idea and hopefully it will help connect a lot of students to some great material! I noticed it wasn't indexing https://www.kadenze.com. Is there any chance you could add…
pkmital on HNNice, please also add NPTEL: http://www.nptelvideos.in/ Many useful technical courses on there of high quality.
davidzweig on HN
Show course start dates and more course details
From 2 comments
How are the results ranked? It would be nice to have possibility to specify the course starting date like 'in 7 days', 'in 30 days', etc.
lexsys on HNBeing a sucker for MOOCs, this is pretty exciting. The search algorithm doesn't seem to work right, though. Also, a bit more information would be nice, i.e. when the next…
dotdi on HN
Questions
How the data is indexed and sourced
From 2 comments
How do you index the courses? Use an API per provider? Or scrape the pages and do machine learning?
gausaauisuain on HNCould someone explain how this works? Meaning, I want to understand how the application uses the data from several MOOCs and get the result. Is that they manually build the data…
antoaravinth on HN
How results are ranked
From 1 comment
How are the results ranked? It would be nice to have possibility to specify the course starting date like 'in 7 days', 'in 30 days', etc.
lexsys on HN
Alternatives named
Class Central
From 1 comment
You might want to check out https://www.class-central.com which offers search as well as reviews.
radnam on HN
Coorsy
From 1 comment
You also can try https://coorsy.com
javascripton on HN
elearning.club
From 1 comment
You might want to check out https://elearning.club. It offers filters by cost, duration and type (eg. Course, Conference presentation and Shows)
skhandkar on HN