

Saylor Foundation: Computer Science - ekm2
http://www.saylor.org/majors/computer-science/

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ColinWright
From the FAQ:

    
    
        Will I be awarded a degree, diploma, or certificate?
    
        The Saylor Foundation is not an accredited institution
        and therefore cannot confer degrees. 
    

<http://www.saylor.org/frequently-asked-questions/#q29>

~~~
EzGraphs
Accurate Title: Take Free Unaccredited Self-Study Online Classes that are part
of many standard C.S. programs.

~~~
Legion
Or, more charitably, "Get a free CS education".

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derekp7
This site appears to fulfill one of the problems I've had with the various
open courseware sites -- where to get started, and how to organize the
learning. However, I'd like to see it go a step further, and organize the
individual courses in a particular degree program into a real schedule. For
example, I'd like to feed in how many hours a week I have to study, and have
it produce a schedule of which courses should be taken together, in which
order, and possibly a class schedule -- "spend one hour on section 2.3 of
class foo, next spend 1 hour on section 1.7 of class bar", for example. Or at
least break out the classes in groups that can be taken together, similar to
semesters in a regular college program.

Anyone have links to similar types of sites with a good education roadmap?

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mrcode925
Not accredited, but I applaud the effort. However, I decided to check out CS
101 to see what they were offering. I am compelled to slog through the entire
course to form a full opinion but the content seems to have been assembled
from ninth grade term papers. The first two reading exercises contain very
little in the form of correct grammar, proper spelling, and coherent thought.

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cantankerous
For what it's worth, the compilers course seems to be fairly well put together
for a free course.

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speg
As someone with a Science degree, but working as a software developer full
time I've always wondered if I'm missing something by not having a CS degree.
Certainly not enough to go back and get an actual degree, but would something
like this would be worth my time?

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ctdonath
A degree ensures you have learned all the basics which experts in the field
believe you need for a solid foundation. It answers and formalizes the "I want
to do/be X, what must I learn?" question. Yes, doing something like this would
be very much worth your while; I've got two (accredited) degrees in the
subject, and still might just run thru this as a refresher.

Time and again over two decades, I've seen self-taught software developers do
well, yet stumble into educational gaps/traps any degreed developer would have
learned to avoid. All too often they can't perceive what's missing because
they're not aware of the advanced material which retroactively fills those
gaps. A formal education includes a lot of "do it this way, you'll understand
later" which was learned via tremendous cost in hours, effort, and money in
the industry, stuff which the self-taught by definition are unaware of and can
only (if ever) learn the hard way. It also includes a lot of "there are other
ways to do this" that one won't pursue unless compelled, and thus expands the
toolbox. It's also embarrassing for the self-taught to go years without
learning something which is standard first/second-year material (like having a
self-appointed software architect get all excited about discovering state
machines, and proceed to implement them in an inappropriate manner).

Do it. Fill in the gaps you're unaware of. Listen to people who say "trust me,
you really do need to do it this way, even if you won't understand why for a
while." Yes, you can learn it all on your own, but it will likely take longer.
Life is finite.

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randomdata
> yet stumble into educational gaps/traps any degreed developer would have
> learned to avoid.

Care to list some of the common ones you've seen? I'm mostly curious, but it
would serve as a good reminder for those who may fall into those traps
themselves.

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amalcon
I don't know about gp, but the most common ones I see are:

    
    
      - Algorithmic complexity analysis ("big-O")
      - Being trapped in a single paradigm
        (e.g. loops vs. recursion)
      - Not understanding the underlying hardware / protocols,
        what they guarantee, and what they don't guarantee
      - Software design knowledge can be spotty; someone might
        know about high-cohesion design, but not know about
        use-case analysis.
      - Not valuing version control, though this is rare now
        it used to be very common
    

Now, it's not at all true that every self-taught developer has all of these
problems. Some have none of these problems; they are just the most common I've
seen.

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mattmanser
To me this reads like a list of problems of self-taught programmers who've
only ever worked on their own.

I've met a fair few old school programmers who were around before CS courses
really took off, they know everything on this list.

I disagree with all but the third, and I especially disagree with the 4th, the
worst designed programs I've seen were written by CS trained people. They try
and implement overly complex models because they've been taught them. Pure
experience trumps book knowledge every single time in software design.

I know I have gaps in my knowledge, but if that's the best you've got I'm
still happy I got a Philosophy degree!

~~~
amalcon
You're absolutely right that every one of these problems tends to go away with
time; that was the one disclaimer I forgot. The more dev work someone has
done, especially on collaborative projects, the less likely they are to have
these problems.

You're also absolutely right that CS training isn't a panacea. Actually I tend
to suggest math or electrical engineering training to people looking to get
into the field. CS programs tend to overcorrect in some areas. For example,
new CS grads often want to overuse regular expressions.

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dlevine
I believe that Michael Saylor announce this about 13 year ago (in 1999). If I
remember correctly, he had a column in Newsweek or Time talking about it. Then
Microstrategy's stock tanked (they had to restate their earnings), and his
fortune pretty much vanished overnight.

It's interesting to see how much has happened in the past 13 years, and how
technology has made this kind of thing feasible. The proliferation of high-
quality online educational companies (Khan Academy, Udacity, Coursera, etc...)
has made it possible to get a real education online. It isn't quite equivalent
to live education, but the best online education is definitely getting close.

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ekm2
They were featured in Forbes a while back
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/ccap/2011/09/14/saylor-as-
savior...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/ccap/2011/09/14/saylor-as-savior/)

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gavinlynch
Love the idea. If only they were accredited. I don't need to learn CS. I just
need that piece of paper as I skipped a step and went directly into the
workforce... _shrugs_

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adambard
So you want the exact opposite of this?

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jamesjguthrie
I might eventually do some proper computer science study but I don't feel like
I need it for now. I'm currently studying for a degree in motorsport & design
engineering and when I graduate I intend to build products using the knowledge
from there. Knowing how to code properly is all fine and well but getting an
industry specific degree and being able to code a product for use in it, I
feel, is much better.

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denzil_correa
I must add that apart from CS they do have coursers for other disciplines like
Chemistry, Art, Economics, Mathematics, Political Science etc. So, I guess the
appropriate title would be "Free Education in multiple disciplines like CS,
Mathematics etc."

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josephjrobison
So if I were to spend 10 hours a week teaching myself Javascript, PHP, Python
or 10 hours a week studying computer science what would you recommend that
would benefit me the most in 5 years and allow me to build web applications
from scratch?

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kmlymi
Is there a University that offers distance learning for a CS Degree (not
necessarily free)?

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simonbrown
<https://www.open.ac.uk/> offers a "Computing and IT" degree and mathematics
degrees, which I believe you can study from outside the UK. I'm not sure how
much CS there is in them, though.

stonnyfrogs (hellbanned) suggested:

<http://www.umuc.edu/>

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simonbrown
Looking at UMUC, it seems it only offers a few subjects, which doesn't include
CS.

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shaunxcode
[http://www.umuc.edu/undergrad/ugprograms/upload/CSCI-12-13.p...](http://www.umuc.edu/undergrad/ugprograms/upload/CSCI-12-13.pdf)

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praveenhm
It is good to check out the list of courses they offered.

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khakimov
Don't forget to close git directory from the web.

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goggles99
Is it just me? or is this just a bunch of links to articles and blog posts
from around the net?

I think that it is really cool, but should not be misrepresented as Computer
Science academia.

