If you want to learn computer programming you can’t go wrong with an education provided by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s “Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science“. Unfortunately, a MIT education isn’t available to everybody.
What if you could get a MIT education from the comfort of your Aeron?
MIT’s “Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs” course is available as a series of video lectures by Hal Abelson and Gerald Jay Sussman, and it’s all online!
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs has been MIT’s introductory pre-professional computer science subject since 1981. It emphasizes the role of computer languages as vehicles for expressing knowledge and it presents basic principles of abstraction and modularity, together with essential techniques for designing and implementing computer languages. This course has had a worldwide impact on computer science curricula over the past two decades.
The course leans towards the Lisp programming language, but the information presented in the lectures is valuable to programmers of any language.
The course requires a high level of commitment. There’s just under 22 hours of lectures spread across 30GB of MPEG video (DivX videos are also available).
It’s a lovely resource. Works great for lisp (scheme dialect actually) beginners and helps you learn a lot about programming paradigms. It’s a great learning experience for those who’ve been trained in syntax of a billion languages without the understanding of a single one. It’ll change the way you program. I’ve actually tried it.