Early Tuesday morning, April 15, 2025, Central Indonesian Time. I received an email from Andrei Neagoie as follows:

Usually I would just skip it and do nothing, but maybe it was fate, my intuition led me to see more details of what was being offered. And boom! the link led to a short video announcing that access to all ztm courses for a week (which was later extended to 2 weeks).

Without thinking twice, I registered and took advantage of the free week facility provided. Since I am now starting to focus on the blockchain field, I focused on using my time to study in related classes, and thankfully managed to complete 2 courses before this promotional period ended.

As a form of gratitude, here I would like to provide a kind of testimonial or impression while studying in courses affiliated with the zero to mastery academy. Maybe it can help friends who are considering a quality place to study technology.

Part 1: My First Experience with Zero to Mastery Academy

Before this free week program, my first introduction to zero to mastery academy was through Udemy. Yes, Andrei Neagoie is one of the top instructors on Udemy with a total of millions of students. It seems that the increasingly small fee sharing system for instructors has caused many instructors to choose to build their own platforms.

The course I took was Tensorflow for Deep Learning Bootcamp. Taught by Daniel Bourke, a practitioner who is quite popular on Youtube because he often gives tips on how to learn machine learning and deep learning. When I took this course, I was studying for my master’s degree. I really learned from 0 here. And I personally am very grateful to the zero to mastery academy because I can apply my learning outcomes here for research purposes and it really helps the process of completing my master’s studies.

Part 2: My Impressions with ZTM and Its Teachers

When I was in high school, I once had a teaching practice lesson. And there is an Arabic proverb that is quite popular with us which goes like this:

الطريقة اهم من المادة
“method is more important than material.”

So what does it have to do with zero to mastery? In total, I completed 3 courses from Zero To Mastery Academy:

• Tensorflow for Deep Learning Bootcamp taught by Daniel Bourke
• NFT 101: Introduction to NFTs taught by Mo Binni
• Solidity, Ethereum and Blockchain: The Complete Developer’s Guide by Markus Waas

Here I need to appreciate Andrei Neagoie, the founder and lead instructor at ZTM. Because the instructors at ZTM seem to have their own standards. This is something that we sometimes don’t find in famous instructors when they try to build their own platforms.

Unhurried teaching pace

While studying here, I felt how the teaching pace was unhurried. It might feel slow for some people. However, it seems that ZTM wants to ensure that the material is delivered carefully and tries its best not to confuse students.

Prerequisites that are not excessive

Have you ever seen a course with very light prerequisites but when you enroll you are disappointed because the level of difficulty is too high?

I myself felt it when I was learning deep learning. Many courses related to machine learning say that the prerequisites are only basic mathematics without the need for programming basics, even though when we enter the level of study it is for masters 😅.

This is what I think ZTM does very elegantly. In the tensorflow for deep learning course, I was taught really from the basics, we even often wrote code repeatedly, not just copy and paste code. It seems that the instructors really understand that repetition is important so that you don’t get used to it. Although the duration of the course is very long, it is very worth it because it indirectly trains students to write code for training from the beginning.

Even after all these years, I still sometimes get the feeling of Daniel Bourke’s voice saying “visualize…visualize…visualize….” lol.

They Understand Their Students

Another thing about ZTM that I really like is how the instructors seem to understand the conditions of their students’ environment when they are learning. For example, during a coding session, the instructor does not hesitate to zoom in on the screen until the writing looks big. They seem to know that many people learn with a split screen, which if the writing is small and split screen then the instructor’s code will be difficult to see, as a result the students will be tired of following the lesson.

I myself have rarely used two screens now, sometimes I am too lazy to just connect an additional screen. As a result, I can still follow the lesson even though I only use a split screen using a Macbook Air.

Active Community
ZTM has an active discord, filled with thousands of students exchanging ideas every day. There are indeed some channels that are not very active in discussions, but in general the ZTM discord has a very positive vibe. Moreover, Andrei as the lead remains active in the discussion group every day, he was even wise enough to take the time to congratulate members who successfully completed the course. A small thing that was quite memorable for me.

Part 3: What I think could be improved

Everything has its shortcomings, and so does ZTM Academy, at least there are some things that I think could be improved in ZTM Academy.

Access to learning paths

What I find very interesting about ZTM Academy is the very rich course library. If we look at the website https://zerotomastery.io/ there are hundreds of courses and dozens of learning paths available. Although there is intersection between learning paths, the paths provided are still very helpful for people like me to choose which courses to study first. Unfortunately, at least for now, the learning path feature cannot be found on the academy page https://academy.zerotomastery.io/.

This UI difference may not be too significant for some people. However, in my opinion, it might be quite inconvenient when we can’t see the learning path directly on the academy dashboard after logging in. Well, it’s not that significant.

Material that is not updated.

One of the main promotions of Zero To Mastery Academy is its material that is always updated. However, it seems that this cannot be implemented in all courses. At least that’s what I found in the Solidity course. There are lessons that still use deprecated libraries and can no longer be updated by the developer. In addition, in some materials, the videos are cut off and the order seems to be mixed up.

The resource location is not uniform.

It is common in every course that we get supporting resources in the form of code or slides. In general, Zero to Mastery Academy has provided adequate resources to complete the course. But maybe what can still be improved is in terms of its arrangement. For example, Daniel Bourke provides resources in the form of a complete tutorial book along with github, while Markus Waas is sufficient with github. I think if the resource aspect could be improved and there were certain standards as well as instructor selection, this could be a very selling point compared to other course platforms.

Closing

Despite all its advantages and disadvantages. I consciously still consider ZeroToMastery Academy as one of the worthy choices to consider when choosing a place to study. Detailed explanations and quality instructors are enough to help you achieve your desired goals.

This platform also not only teaches hard skills, but also mindset, effective learning methods and other supporting things. There are indeed shortcomings, but with all the advantages and Andrei as the founder and lead instructor who is very open to feedback, I don’t think this will be a big problem for you.

Hopefully this mediocre review is useful, cheers 😁