I was planning on building a course, looking for feedback on topic

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Hi all,

I’m using Elm on frontend for the last 3 years and was thinking of building a course, here’s the landing page.

I know that Elm is not JavaScript, but I like to create content with what I have passion on, and Elm is one of those. That said, I’m having a hard time getting traction so far and not sure if it’s because of the amount of interested developers in Elm or because of the topic I picked.

Maybe I can outline here and get some feedback.

I’ve built 4 single-page applications with Elm so far (3 in production, one did not shipped). Across all those I had to implement real-world scenarios and I was planning on having from 10 to 12 sections separated in around 4-8 short 5 minutes videos demonstrating one aspect in detail. For example:

Section: User input

  • Submitting data
  • File upload
  • Drag and drop
  • Keyboard shortcuts

Section: WebSocket

  • Ports
  • Sending JSON data
  • Receiving JSON data
  • WebSocket in a SPA

Across the 10-12 sections a real-world Elm application will be built, something that people following the course would code and would use after. The last video of each section would be an hands-on exercise where they have to apply the knowledge covered in the section.

So the main topic is building single-page application with an emphasis on being pragmatic and having short focus video addressing one specific problem at a time in detail.

It might be too vague for now, maybe I should work on the table of content and retest traction. Truth is I fear there’s just not enough Elm beginners or people looking at trying something new on the frontend.

Which is very sad as Elm, in my opinion, makes things so much better.

I’ll probably end up doing the course anyway because I have so much passion for Elm that I need to try spreading the words, but so far I fail getting a positive response in finding interested devs.

Maybe someone have published a book or a course already and could share some experience.

p.s. I’ve published a book on building SaaS with Go in September 2018 (I’m kind of all fine with niche content as-in I’m not doing this for money).

Thoughts?

Thanks.

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I may not be the best to judge video content as I don’t find myself watching videos to learn a new subject. Given that, I am all in favor of more places and perspectives on learning Elm.

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I assume that you mean traction as in uptake of your tutorial.

Here’s my feelings on this.

I had a quick look and I’m probably in your target market segment as I’m interested in using Elm, would go for a SPA, and I’m able to pay your price. But I’m not going to pay for a course without a recommendation from someone I trust or a preview of the course. I don’t have either so I won’t buy right now.

I’m also put off by Elm itself and I suspect that it is a couple of years away from allaying my concerns. So maybe you are just a bit early and there are lots of new users coming in the future.

I remember being in a similar position with Python a couple of decades ago. In comparison, Python appeared more accessible and there were a lot of free tutorials. In many ways Elm is more advanced but I notice that many “basic tasks” appear to be more complicated and that is daunting. It just doesn’t look fun … yet.

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Thanks for the reply:

I fully understand, since I’m debating about “creating” the content hence it’s not launched, there’s no recommendation or preview possible yet.

When I say traction I mean regarding amount of email subscription / reaching developers interested in Elm and SPA.

This is very interesting though, would you care listing some of those tasks?

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