Study Programming at Harvard, Stanford, or MIT for Free

Almost every Thursday at noon, we spend two full hours following Harvard's introduction to programming course, and reacting to it with my community on Twitch.

But since I know many blog readers aren't necessarily used to consuming live video, I decided to talk about it here.

If you didn't know, the biggest American universities put some (or even all) of their computer science and programming courses online, accessible for free.

As you can imagine, these courses are of incredible quality, but on top of that they're extremely accessible (as long as you understand at least a bit of English).

Whether it's to get started in computer science, deepen your understanding of a particular subject, or even put it on your résumé as a junior, I can only recommend you visit these goldmines of knowledge:

Harvard

Harvard's introduction to computer science and the art of programming course is one of the most renowned courses in the world.

CS50 is extremely popular, and for good reason: a large portion of the students who attend it at university have no prior experience with programming, which means all the basics are covered in a very accessible and perfectly presented way.

Stanford University

Stanford University publishes a huge number of courses, especially on everything related to data, analysis, and artificial intelligence (machine learning and neural networks).

I especially recommend the course titled "Introduction to Convolutional Neural Networks for Visual Recognition" which introduces you to visual recognition through algorithms and increasingly complex artificial intelligence processes, starting from almost zero.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

MIT is the most famous school for its contributions to the world of modern computer science (alongside Harvard) thanks to its many research labs and the fabulous projects that have come out of them.

MIT embodies the culture of hackers, open-source, and open-innovation, so it's only natural that for years all of the school's courses have been available for free online!

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In addition to their content, these universities very often have learning models and paths for their students that are very different from what we know in France. I actually devoted an article to this, available here.