6 Killer Resources for Getting Free University-Level Online Classes

Who says quality education cannot be free?

Did I just use the words free, university, online and classes in one sentence?

Yes I did!

Thanks to the belief of the awesome people at Udacity that university-level education can be both high quality and low cost, they are happily providing anyone (with Internet, of course) with free online classes mainly about computer science and programming.

They used the power of the Internet to connect some of the greatest teachers to hundreds of thousands of students (like us!) all over the world.

As of this writing, there are six available free online courses from Udacity:

Building a Search Engine with David Evans and Sebastian Thrun – This class will give you an introduction to computing. In seven weeks, you will build your own search engine complete with a web crawler and way of ranking popular pages. You will understand some of the key concepts in computer science, and learn how to write your own computer programs. No previous background in programming is expected.
Design of Computer Programs with Peter Norvig – The key to progressing from a novice programmer to an expert is mindful practice. In this class you will practice going from a problem description to a solution, using a series of assignments. With each problem you will learn new concepts, patterns, and methods that will expand your ability and help move you along the path from novice towards expertise.
Web Application Engineering with Steve Huffman – Web applications have the power to provide useful services to millions of people worldwide. In this class, you will learn how to build your own blog application starting from the basics of how the web works and how to set up a web application and process user input, to how to use databases, manage user accounts, interact with other web services, and make your application scale to support large numbers of users.
Programming Languages with Westley Weimer – This class will give you an introduction to fundamentals of programming languages. In seven weeks, you will build your own simple web browser complete with the ability to parse and understand HTML and JavaScript. You will learn key concepts such as how to specify and process valid strings, sentences and program structures. Then, you will design and build an interpreter – a program that simulates other programs.
Programming a Robotic Car with Sebastian Thrun – This class, taught by one of the foremost experts in AI, will teach you basic methods in Artificial Intelligence, including: probabilistic inference, planning and search, localization, tracking and control, all with a focus on robotics. Extensive programming examples and assignments will apply these methods in the context of building self-driving cars.
Applied Cryptography with David Evans – Cryptography is about “secret writing”. In this class, we will introduce the mathematical foundations of cryptography and build programs to perform encryption. We will see how to use cryptography to solve important problem such as how to authenticate users, secure websites, and do computation without exposing up your data. We will also look at the things that can go wrong when cryptography is misused or implemented badly.

Being a software developer myself, I am very pleased and excited to know that there are free online courses about computer science available to the public.

How about you? Do you have any links about free online courses that you would like to share? Kindly share your links and resources by leaving on the comment box below!

To our success in all areas of life,
Argel Tiburcio
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Argel Tiburcio

Founder and CEO at ArgelTiburcio.com

When he is not busy watching "The Office", lounging at the beach, or playing 1st person shooting games, Argel consistently invests in the stock market, both local and global. He loves learning through books, training, seminars, and workshops. He also helps Pinoys create, manage, grow, and protect their wealth as a globally-certified Professional Financial Advisor. Get in touch with him by sending an email to contact[at]argeltiburcio.com