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Has anyone self taught CS/Math undergrad curricula from public course materials?

by curious16 on 9/19/23, 6:34 AM with 3 comments

Many universities have there undergrad curriculum available online along with their course materials (slides, videos, assignments, etc). Some are locked down and little searching reveals sources. E.g.: Berkeley, MIT, CMU, Stanford, etc.

My question is has anyone here on HN did something like picking one school's curriculum and studying its entire undergrad core sequence or something similar to go from knowing nothing about the subject (or trivial something) to becoming well versed to find a job or do something else.

Since CS and Math are the most accessible subjects, I mentioned majorly those two. Any other subjects are also welcome.

How long did it take you? Which courses were the highlights?

  • by Penyngton on 9/19/23, 9:41 AM

    I'm not quite in the situation you're looking for, because I have got an undergraduate maths degree, but due to my personal situation at the time, I wasn't a good student and I have done a lot of self-teaching in the years since then. Mainly in mathematics, but also theoretical computer science and some programming.

    One thing I'd say is don't overlook books. Textbooks may seem less appealing than slides or videos, but seriously sitting and reading a maths book from cover to cover is a very powerful experience. It may take months, but you will learn something significant from doing it. And if you do that for say Thomas's Calculus and Anton's Elementary Linear Algebra, that's about half of a maths degree already.

    Anyway, I'm happy to discuss these topics further with you (or anyone else reading this). I'd personally love to find a serious online community for studying mathematics, but it seems very hard to coordinate such a thing.

  • by rg111 on 9/19/23, 7:31 AM

    A bunch of people are doing it at OSSU [0].

    I personally did many full courses from open materials. These do take SERIOUS efforts and consistency. So be prepared for that.

    [0]: https://github.com/ossu/computer-science

  • by ggr2342 on 9/19/23, 6:56 AM

    I believe Scott Young did something like this with MIT's curriculum. https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/myprojects/mit-challenge-2/