[NonDescript]

Hi there. I recently took a leave of absence during my first year of college. During my time there I became highly critical and discouraged in my learning progress, that there had to be a better way. These last few days I have been trying to find whether self education is a better alternative for me. If I can make it work I will continue with it, otherwise I will go back to college.

Either way I am looking for an education not in programming, but in computer science. From what I've gathered there's much more to development than just "knowing" a language. I want to make that distinction.

I'm playing with different ideas of what to do for a curriculum (I need some framework to direct me or I'll end up lost and confused). I had no idea that MIT has everything you need to learn undergrad CS online. So I could follow that curriculum alone. Alternatively, or supplementarily I found UNSW lectures up to CS3. Also stanford has a few courses. There are booklists and tons of other online resources not involving education too.

Basically I'm looking for tips, if I have missed anything and any recommendations on what exactly to learn. Thanks for any input.

[NecroWinter]

As far as I can tell, the MIT stuff is pretty good. IIRC they have it laid out in a way that makes sense, youll take easier stuff first then harder.

This is the future of education. I only wish I knew about this stuff before I got started with college and had all this debt.

[blackcompe]

This booklist is much probably more suited for a CS education. StackExchange's CSTheory site is geared towards nothing but theoretical material, which a modern CS degree doesn't entirely consist of.

Both MIT OCW and Coursera are great learning resources. I'd suggest starting with Coursera since it is a real class (in some sense) with due dates, uploading of new material, and discussion forums. Your going to learn better when working with others. Whatever courses Coursera doesn't have, can be found at OCW.

As far as the workload and difficulty, I'd say Coursera is on par with a true college education. Some of the classes are the exact duplicates of what's offered in the original course, and some of them cut the material to make them more accessible while leaving them somewhat difficult still.

[stackoverflow]

Udacity.com

[NonDescript]

I'm filing away the booklist thread and Udacity. And I'll keep in mind that tip that Coursera is more structured. Thanks everyone! Here's the resources I've compiled so far, hopefully someone finds it useful.

This post has been edited by modi123_1: 12 June 2012 - 01:35 PM
Reason for edit:: fixed botched image tags

[Saer_x]

EDX has free courses in CS, too.

https://www.edx.org/