

MIT OpenCourseWare programming lecture videos (in Python) - bitsai
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-00-introduction-to-computer-science-and-programming-fall-2008/video-lectures/

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metastew
I checked this out over a year ago and I couldn't go through with MIT
OpenCourseWare classes because of lack of subtitles for many of their
videos... But now I'm pleasantly surprised to see they added subtitle supports
for Python classes! Kudos to MIT for recognizing that there are many
disabled/foreign students keen to learn from their OCW materials.

~~~
beagledude
I've watched a few of these, that professor is awesome. He teaches in a very
positive way that's clearly understandable. He's the best one I've found on
itunes U

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rosstafarian
checkout harvard's <http://cs50.tv> (beginning compsci mostly c, not c++) the
professor is one of the best i've seen in terms of how enthusiastic he is
about the material itself and about teaching it especially to students without
much prior experience. You can tell he really loves this stuff and his
attitude is infectious.

~~~
johnnyjung
Definitely! It somehow manages to brush upon C, HTML, PHP, SQL and some
Javascript...so you can actually start doing stuff.

A good starting point for CS, imo (and certainly better than the intro to CS
course at my college).

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tvon
Having some free time on my hands lately, I've been cruising iTunesU for stuff
like this, it's been pretty great. I can sit in my living room doing work on
my laptop with courses from Stanford, MIT or ${reputible_university} playing
on my TV. It's amazing how accessible knowledge is these days...

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JCB_K
I tried these, but ended up with Google Code Classes:
[http://code.google.com/edu/languages/google-python-
class/ind...](http://code.google.com/edu/languages/google-python-
class/index.html)

worked better for me.

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zemanel
it's not "Python video lectures", it's "Introduction to Computer science" in
which the teacher uses Python, and you can't barely see the code in the
videos, so the real potential of these classes is theory (i know, i've seen
them)

~~~
bitsai
Touche; title updated.

~~~
zemanel
... not that i don't love both Python and the vids :) but it was the truth

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espeed
There is even an OpenStudy page for the course where you can get help:
[http://openstudy.com/study-
groups/MIT+6.0+Intro+Computer+Sci...](http://openstudy.com/study-
groups/MIT+6.0+Intro+Computer+Science+\(OCW\))

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rapind
Thanks for the link. I'm a self-taught coder of about 13 years now (C, Java,
Ruby) and I always feel like there's a few basics I'm missing so I'll probably
tackle this after Lisp. Besides, Python has always seemed like a very nice
syntax (love when indenting means something but the colon bugs me).

~~~
bitsai
No problem :)

IMHO, Zed Shaw's "Learn Python The Hard Way" (free book) is also really good
at teaching both Python and programming:

<http://learnpythonthehardway.org/index>

~~~
flatline
This looks like a great book, I perused it briefly a while back, but I think
that if you've been coding for 13 years you're well beyond the level of its
target audience.

~~~
wyclif
That's true. Zed's book is for total beginners; people who are just learning
how to use a text editor.

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mbowcock
This is another good resource for similar content. <http://academicearth.org/>

~~~
mkr-hn
The videos on that site stutter a lot for me. Probably the fact that I'm on an
ancient laptop.

:(

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maurits
I have nothing but praise for the MIT/SIT for putting their courses online.
For an introduction to python and cs, however, I like "Practical Programming:
An Introduction to Computer Science Using Python"
<http://pragprog.com/titles/gwpy/practical-programming>

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achompas
Excellent course--as a self-taught coder I used these classes to learn the
basics. Great review of common data structures, big-O notation & algorithms,
and even some basic coding syntax. HN has a number of lurkers who want to
learn to code at any given time--all of them should take this class.

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cambriar
MIT OCW is currently one of my home pages, but it's the series on Algorithms.
The other home page is HN of course. Good material no doubt.

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D3lt4
My only problem with MIT CourseWare is that the video (audio sometimes) is
poor quality, I wish they uploaded 720p learning beauty.

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invertd
Thank you bitsai! Great source. Google's Python Class is also good.

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mcn
Their two day class, right? I'm a fan of that also; it quickly gets you to a
level where you can do basic things and lookup slightly more complex things.
[http://code.google.com/edu/languages/google-python-
class/ind...](http://code.google.com/edu/languages/google-python-
class/index.html)

