Hi, I’m a first year CS student and this 3 month period of vacations I want to follow a good free course on programming. If it’s possible, I also want to learn how is the process in which a code written in a text editor can become an executable with it’s GUI in the operating system (currently using Linux), because I really have no idea how that works.
Browsing the web for it have become overwhelming and I’m finding trouble in deciding what to follow, and I also need some order in order to learn things.
I would really appreciate if you can tell me if you know any course that meets this requirements.
or, you know, touch some grass and don’t burn out while waiting for the courses to start
Students don’t need to touch grass. They are still eager and motivated and should take advantage of that mindset while it lasts.
It might last a little longer if they don’t burn themselves out. Just my two cents, though
I think there are good free online courses, like Harvard’s CS 50 course. I’ve also heard of OpenCourseWare. I haven’t used either of them personally, though.
If you want to learn how programming languages can go from text in a file to something a computer can process, I recommend either:
Programming Languages: Application and Interpretation
or
If you want to know how a computer processes the information, I recommend:
If those are too much for your level of programming knowledge, I suggest one of the following to get up to speed:
A Data-Centric Introduction to Computing
or
I can heartedly recommend this one NandToTetris.
In this course gives you a complete understanding of how computers and programming qorks from first principle.
You’ll start by (virtually) making chips with just a nand chip, than you’ll make a cpu, ram and rom, evetually on to a full fletched computer. Than you’ll write your own assembly language, parser and compiler for that computer. You’ll write your own OS and your own higher level language (OOP) and eventually you’ll write a geme (tetris) in that language.
This is of course all very simplified, but very educational.
Great Option!
This is the best option. I recommend Nand2Tetris to everyone! It’s an incredibly well designed and executed course
I recommend taking a look at https://roadmap.sh/. It’s not a course, it’s a website with several “roadmaps” for learning languages or specific fields. There’s plenty of docs and it’s easy to follow!
I don’t quite trust the reasoning and assumptions behind the suggestions at roadmap.sh.
Depends on which programming language you want to learn.
https://www.w3schools.com/ is a good resource for the basics in some of the most used programming languages and a good reference for looking up how things work.
Most learning of programming is IMHO learning by doing. And by breaking things.
Think of a program you want to make (or one you want to replicate, just for learning purposes) and set this as your goal. It doesn’t need to be perfect, optimized or even fully functional. Just grab a hot beverage of your choice, sit down and try.
There are plenty of (sometimes even free) books with examples how to use the programming language of your choice. If you want to go that way, again, grab a hot beverage of your choice and start reading.
w3schools is much improved over what it was originally, but it never became a top quality resource (even if you limited your search to “popular” and free). Also it’s very web centric and OP is looking for something that’s more fundamental.
