4 ms·

Ask HN: What's your favorite online course?

395 points by sidcool 11y ago

Better if technology related, but an open question nevertheless.

sonabinu 11y ago
https://www.coursera.org/course/rprog https://www.coursera.org/course/rprog - This is the best online course I've taken. Another one I am signed up for and have already done one week of lectures (preview mode) and find very applicable is https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn/ https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn/
- area51org 11y ago
  Thanks for posting this.
- dhawalhs 11y ago
  Interestingly we get a lot of mixed reviews for R Prog course: https://www.class-central.com/mooc/1713/coursera-r-programming#reviews https://www.class-central.com/mooc/1713/coursera-r-programmi... Learning how to learn is the best course online that any one can take.
  - sonabinu 11y ago
    I blogged my experience with learning R here - http://datagrad.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-r-learning-curve.html http://datagrad.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-r-learning-curve.ht... and with the class here - http://datagrad.blogspot.com/2013/01/my-most-recent-mooc-experience.html http://datagrad.blogspot.com/2013/01/my-most-recent-mooc-exp...
  - 1wheel 11y ago
    I though Jenny Bryan's R class had more modern take on R that was significantly easier to follow. https://stat545-ubc.github.io/ https://stat545-ubc.github.io/ Even with some R experience I didn't feel like I got enough information from the R Prog lectures to complete the assignments.
  - scrollaway 11y ago
    I've been spending the past hour on "Leaning how to learn" because of the recommendations here. I was... well, the course was definitely not quite what I expected. What I'm seeing here is a bunch of "tricks", and a lot of "brain facts" which I would usually dismiss as pseudoscience. The course almost feels like a scam. What gives?
    - dhawalhs 11y ago
      All of the course content is based on the hard science, but is simplified so that every one can understand. You can look at the background of one of the course instructor: https://www.coursera.org/instructor/terry https://www.coursera.org/instructor/terry
- thmcmahon 11y ago
  I also found the r programming class to be super useful.
- nl 11y ago
  I didn't think the R course was that great. I only did the first course in the speciality but I thought the assignments didn't match the lectures very well. I don't really know R but I still got through OK (100%) but it didn't compare well with the EdX AMPLab Spark course I did around the same time.
- pedrodelfino 11y ago
  Learning how to learn is really cool! Best time investment I have ever made.
middleclick 11y ago
Dan Boneh's "Introduction to Cryptography". (Part 1) https://www.coursera.org/course/crypto https://www.coursera.org/course/crypto (Part 2) https://www.coursera.org/course/crypto2 https://www.coursera.org/course/crypto2
- zzmxleo 11y ago
  Yeah, the course is really cool.
- calvins 11y ago
  +1 for Dan's crypto1. I don't think crypto2 has been taught yet via coursera, as I've been waiting to take it and have seen it pushed back several times, and I've seen others say they'd been watching it get delayed for years. It does seem that Dan has been recording videos for part 2 in 2015 though (according to one of his students), so there's reason for hope that it might happen in 2016.
  - nindalf 11y ago
    I think we'll know in a couple of weeks if its going to start on Jan 11th or not. If its not ready yet, it'll be pushed back by a month or two by mid December. That's how the previous postponements were done.
  - uulbiy 11y ago
    I finished Cryptography I in March 2012 and wanted to take Cryptography II ever since. Every time the announced time is close it gets pushed back by 4 months.
- kbart 11y ago
  I came here to say the same. A really, really good course, a must to everyone who's interested in cryptography.
- Kurtz79 11y ago
  I did part 1 and liked it a lot. I also liked Udacity crypto course, less formal but with great "hands on" exercises: https://www.udacity.com/course/applied-cryptography--cs387 https://www.udacity.com/course/applied-cryptography--cs387
jpetitto 11y ago
"Programming Languages" - https://www.coursera.org/course/proglang https://www.coursera.org/course/proglang "Compilers" - https://www.coursera.org/course/compilers https://www.coursera.org/course/compilers
- ooooak 11y ago
  are you me ?
- thisone 11y ago
  Programming Languages is one of those courses that just keeps on giving. A great basis for functional and Lisp fundamentals. I'm just starting a journey into Erlang and that course has meant that the switch isn't as difficult as it could have been. The course format was interesting. I'm not 100% on board with doing peer assessment, but I did like being able to see how other people handled the assignments.
zzmxleo 11y ago
The Hardware/Software Interface - https://class.coursera.org/hwswinterface-002 https://class.coursera.org/hwswinterface-002 This course is amazing, especially for the assignments.
lindbergh 11y ago
Convex Optimization by Stephen Boyd (Stanford EE364A) available on itunesU. There's also a CVX101 Mooc[1], but I don't how it's different from the original material. IMO it's not the topic itself, but the invaluable material for machine learning, statistics and applied mathematics. And Boyd has such a huge insight on the topic it's always a pleasure to watch his lectures. [1]https://lagunita.stanford.edu/courses/Engineering/CVX101/Winter2014/about https://lagunita.stanford.edu/courses/Engineering/CVX101/Win...
- _raoulcousins 11y ago
  Thanks for sharing! On iTunes U are there assignments or other course materials, or just the video lectures? I only see the videos there and I'd like to get my hands dirty practicing assignments and not just watch the lectures.
  - lindbergh 11y ago
    Then I suggest the website of the course where you can find homework and lots of material. You can follow the course as if you were enrolled. Also the free pdf copy of the book will certainly be useful. http://stanford.edu/class/ee364a/index.html http://stanford.edu/class/ee364a/index.html http://stanford.edu/~boyd/cvxbook/ http://stanford.edu/~boyd/cvxbook/
kevindeasis 11y ago
It has been over a year and I haven't finished it yet, but I find it the most interesting. It's Harvard's philosophy course [1] Also, intro to comp sci by Harvard's open courseware. Without these, I might've dropped out of comp sci in my second year [2] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBdfcR-8hEY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBdfcR-8hEY [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-OxzIC6pic&list=PLvJoKWRPIu8G6Si7LlvmBPA5rOJ9BA29R https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-OxzIC6pic&list=PLvJoKWRPIu...
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
dools 11y ago
mixergy.com
kenrick95 11y ago
CS188.1x Artificial Intelligence by BerkeleyX at edx.org. [1] I took this course back in Spring 2013 and I really enjoy the course project of making an intelligent Pac-Man. :) Through this course, besides learning AI, I also learned Python (before this, I didn't know how to code in Python at all). And with the knowledge from this course, I made a simple connect four game with AI implementation as the player's opponent. [2] [1] https://www.edx.org/course/artificial-intelligence-uc-berkeleyx-cs188-1x https://www.edx.org/course/artificial-intelligence-uc-berkel... [2] http://kenrick95.github.io/c4/demo/ http://kenrick95.github.io/c4/demo/
- manish_gill 11y ago
  Taking this course right now. Just about to start Homework 2. Awesome stuff. I've laid out a curriculum for myself starting from this course and ending in ML expertise. :D
zan5hin 11y ago
Developing iOS 8 Apps with Swift https://itunes.apple.com/us/course/developing-ios-8-apps-swift/id961180099 https://itunes.apple.com/us/course/developing-ios-8-apps-swi...
cjauvin 11y ago
Discrete Optimization https://www.coursera.org/course/optimization https://www.coursera.org/course/optimization -- I really enjoyed this challenging class with a very dynamic teacher, and organized around a set of tough problems that you can tackle using a choice of optimization paradigms (e.g. you can decide to "specialize" in "local search" if you want, and try to solve eveything with it).
- piggybox 11y ago
  I did that and it was super fun
tmlee 11y ago
I see a lot of tech related courses in this discussion; here is something off the wall if you are into "Coffee making" https://www.skillshare.com/classes/culinary/From-Plant-to-Cup-Brew-an-Amazing-Cup-of-Coffee/351651108 https://www.skillshare.com/classes/culinary/From-Plant-to-Cu... Made by the guys from The Blue Bottle, splendid tutorial!
samwgoldman 11y ago
I haven't taken many online courses, but here are my favorites (notice a trend): Andrew Ng's ML Class - This makes the list because it is incredibly useful. I didn't have much background in the field and this class is a practical survey of ideas. Not a ton of depth, but exposes you to a lot of information gently. Daphne Koller's PGM Class - This was the most rewarding. I banged my head on a lot of this material, but it was an incredible feeling when things started to click. That I was able to complete this class is a testament to Dr. Koller's excellence as an educator. Dan Jurafsky's and Christopher Manning's NLP Class - This class was the most fun. I thought the exercises were incredibly well designed. Unlike the first two courses, the exercises were a lot more interesting. For ML and PGM, you mostly know when you have the answer and you are rewarded with 100%. NLP assignments are based on how well your system generalizes, which made me try harder to improve my systems, and helped me enjoy the course.
- iraphael 11y ago
  NLP has been on my watchlist for a semester now. No word on when future sessions will happen. I'm about to give up on that and just watch the old videos. Too bad I won't get the assignments :/
  - eliben 11y ago
    Can't you still do the old assignments?
- anoopelias 11y ago
  Links, Andrew Ng's ML Class - https://www.coursera.org/learn/machine-learning https://www.coursera.org/learn/machine-learning Daphne Koller's PGM Class - https://www.coursera.org/course/pgm https://www.coursera.org/course/pgm Dan Jurafsky's and Christopher Manning's NLP Class - https://www.coursera.org/course/nlp https://www.coursera.org/course/nlp
- platz 11y ago
  Koller's PGM was fun but very hard to generalize outside of the problems presented in the class. Opportunities to implement loopy belief propagation just don't seem to come up as much ad I'd like.
dbcooper 11y ago
Can anyone recommend a bioinformatics course (esp. an intro level one)?
- lujayne 11y ago
  I've only just started it, but this looks great in terms of the content they cover, and they also provide quite a few programming tasks. https://class.coursera.org/hiddenmessages-006 https://class.coursera.org/hiddenmessages-006
senith 11y ago
Not technology related but I personally like Aswath Damodaran's valuation courses http://www.graduatetutor.com/corporate-finance-tutoring/aswath-damodaran-tutoring/ http://www.graduatetutor.com/corporate-finance-tutoring/aswa...
nihils 11y ago
Abstract Algebra by Benedict Gross from the Harvard Extension School.
- auvrw 11y ago
  this looks like [+] an excellent course, if only b/c it uses a text by Artin. [+] http://wayback.archive-it.org/3671/20150529001651/https://www.extension.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/openlearning/math222/files/OLI_MathE222_Syllabus.pdf http://wayback.archive-it.org/3671/20150529001651/https://ww...
dfan 11y ago
MIT's 8.05x, Mastering Quantum Mechanics (https://www.edx.org/course/mastering-quantum-mechanics-mitx-8-05x https://www.edx.org/course/mastering-quantum-mechanics-mitx-...) It's the only MOOC I've taken that was anywhere close to the kind of experience I had as an actual undergraduate at MIT. Outstanding lectures with accompanying lecture notes, challenging but rewarding problem sets, lots of interaction by the professor and other staff in the forums. It's not a course in the sense of having problem sets and grades, but V. Balakrishnan's lecture series on classical physics (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5E4E56893588CBA8 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5E4E56893588CBA8) is amazing, just incredibly dense with insight.
deleted 11y ago
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Yeroc 11y ago
I haven't taken many online courses but my wife & I just took the course "Learning How to Learn" (https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn) together and I wish this was available before I went to university. They do a great job of presenting the content and provide a lot of references for additional reading for those that have a deeper interest. It should probably be considered the pre-requisite to all other online courses!
sferoze 11y ago
Marvin Minsky, Society of Mind Class Lecture Playlist on Youtube - https://youtu.be/-pb3z2w9gDg?list=PLqw2b1BiJEx8Ii2RJBk9C0iC3pG__EpSJ https://youtu.be/-pb3z2w9gDg?list=PLqw2b1BiJEx8Ii2RJBk9C0iC3...
mrestko 11y ago
As a medical student, I though the Coursera course on Clinical Problem Solving was quite good: https://www.coursera.org/course/clinprobsolv https://www.coursera.org/course/clinprobsolv
omilu 11y ago
sicp is the best programming course hands down. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Op3QLzMgSY&list=PLB63C06FAF154F047 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Op3QLzMgSY&list=PLB63C06FAF...
- ChicagoBoy11 11y ago
  Dat music, tho.
glennos 11y ago
Paid, but I got a lot of this course for learning Ruby/Rails https://www.gotealeaf.com/ https://www.gotealeaf.com/
kregasaurusrex 11y ago
Introduction to Cryptography, by Christof Paar. His book ' Understanding Cryptography: A Textbook for Students and Practitioners' also provides great insight to the subject. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aHkqB2-46k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aHkqB2-46k
nwjtkjn 11y ago
https://www.coursera.org/course/algs4partI https://www.coursera.org/course/algs4partI https://www.coursera.org/course/algs4partII https://www.coursera.org/course/algs4partII I took these to prepare for first-job interviews coming out of grad school. Got an offer from a company frequently mentioned on this site, so I guess they helped.
uvu 11y ago
This is CS50! https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-computer-science-harvardx-cs50x https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-computer-science-har...
- marincounty 11y ago
  The Harvard computer sci course really helped me out. I didn't take the class, but put all classes on my iPod. I would listen to lectures while exercising at night. This course really helped me understand the ever changing computer lingo. I probally should have done the lessons. Once you get used to the vocabulary, and all the acronyms--it's all starts to fall into place.
- shpx 11y ago
  This is how I got into programming, some people laughed at me for learning C as my first language, but I think it paid off.
damian2000 11y ago
Engineering Software as a Service: An Agile Approach Using Cloud Computing http://www.saasbook.info/courses http://www.saasbook.info/courses
thecolorblue 11y ago
Yale has a great class on Game Theory. It provides some alternatives to solving problems from the normal CS algorithms. http://oyc.yale.edu/economics/econ-159 http://oyc.yale.edu/economics/econ-159
hendry 11y ago
I dare say Ryan Kroonenburg's https://www.udemy.com/aws-certified-developer-associate-2015/ https://www.udemy.com/aws-certified-developer-associate-2015... Also if you're into getting into making videos, https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/lessons-for-final-cut-pro-x/id952621966?mt=12 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/lessons-for-final-cut-pro-x/... was surprisingly good 10 bucks spent.
valgaze 11y ago
Dr. Strang's linear algebra course is absolutely amazing: http://web.mit.edu/18.06/www/videos.shtml http://web.mit.edu/18.06/www/videos.shtml https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_Strang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_Strang
- it_learnses 11y ago
  i watched these many years ago when i was in university. So much clarity in these! I'm eternally grateful for MIT putting these up.
- yoklov 11y ago
  You (or anybody else, for that matter) don't happen to know of something similar for geometric algebra, do you?
Adam_O 11y ago
My all star lineup would be: The Analytics Edge - https://www.edx.org/course/analytics-edge-mitx-15-071x-0 https://www.edx.org/course/analytics-edge-mitx-15-071x-0 Design of Computer Programs - https://www.udacity.com/course/design-of-computer-programs--cs212 https://www.udacity.com/course/design-of-computer-programs--... Justice - https://www.edx.org/course/justice-harvardx-er22-1x-0 https://www.edx.org/course/justice-harvardx-er22-1x-0 If I had more time I would love to go through the bioinformatics specialization on Coursera. They have 2 books and an exercise site (rosalind.info). It looks like great fun. https://www.coursera.org/specializations/bioinformatics?utm_medium=courseDescripTop https://www.coursera.org/specializations/bioinformatics?utm_...
- amykhar 11y ago
  Design of Computer Programs was decidedly the best course I ever took online. I was lucky enough to take it when it was first offered. Peter Norvig was very active in the course forum.
- geomark 11y ago
  +1 for The Analytics Edge. Along the same lines but a more thorough treatment of linear regression and statistical inference is the excellent Data Analysis and Statistical Inference https://www.coursera.org/course/statistics https://www.coursera.org/course/statistics
jatemack 11y ago
Best general CS class I have found so far. Well laid out, easy to follow, and very informative. http://csfieldguide.org.nz/index.html http://csfieldguide.org.nz/index.html
tagawa 11y ago
It's not technical but the best I've taken so far is Songwriting on Coursera: https://www.coursera.org/learn/songwriting https://www.coursera.org/learn/songwriting Presented by Pat Pattison from Berklee College of Music, I started the course thinking who is this guy? By the end I was hanging off his every word. Even if you've never thought of writing a song it opens your eyes to the talent (and tricks!) in the music business.
- deleted 11y ago
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- dasboth 11y ago
  I took the "Developing your Musicianship" and "Jazz Improvisation" courses, which I believe are in the same specialisation. The first one was at a very basic level and the improv was one was more advanced, but both were excellent. Highly recommended for aspiring musicians. Good to hear a recommendation for the Songwriting course, thanks, I'll check it out.
  - makeset 11y ago
    I also started Songwriting and Jazz Improvisation, and while both had outstanding content and instruction, the peer-grading of assignments was a complete failure and forced me to quit the coursework timeline. Aside from reviewing others' work being a huge time sink, all feedback I ever got myself was completely useless, like "You did everything in the instructions, but I don't like this" or "Gee, I don't know enough to tell you how to do this any better." I would have gladly paid to get qualified feedback.
    - dasboth 11y ago
      You're right, I should have mentioned that, as I actually had a similar experience. A lot of the comments I received were also along the lines of "that's great" (when I knew it wasn't and I was actually looking forward to some constructive criticism from someone better than me) or, as you mentioned, the classic "I don't know enough to help you". Paying for qualified feedback would have made it better, although I still felt like I took a lot away from the taught content.
cordovas 11y ago
KhanAcademy! I would have to say anything on KhanAcademy. Sal Khan just does an incredible job of explaining things. I particularly like his statistics course as a good primer into stats or if you need to quickly brush up on the subject https://www.khanacademy.org/math/probability/statistics-inferential https://www.khanacademy.org/math/probability/statistics-infe...
- dasboth 11y ago
  Seconded. Brought my linear algebra and probability theory up to scratch within a day. I don't know what it is about how he explains the material, but it just clicked for me first time, every time.
jestinjoy1 11y ago
I a compsci grad. My favorite one is The Hardware/Software Interface: https://www.coursera.org/course/hwswinterface https://www.coursera.org/course/hwswinterface
aaggarwal 11y ago
Now the MOOCs are all popular, there are a lot of interesting courses out there, but I feel the best one is still the first online course I took in 2012, the pilot from edX (MITx at that time) - 6.002x Circuits and Electronics (https://6002x.mitx.mit.edu https://6002x.mitx.mit.edu) by Dr. Anant Agarwal and Dr. Gerald Sussman. It's an awesome course that introduces one to the electronics that goes behind modern day computers and smartphones. It really helped me understand how things work and what questions to ask.
adi92 11y ago
HBX Core http://hbx.hbs.edu/hbx-core http://hbx.hbs.edu/hbx-core Its a paid online business course by Harvard Business School with 3 modules - Business Analytics, Economics for Managers, Financial Accounting Material is not super challenging (maybe except for Accounting), but its still a lot of work and very rewarding. There is a strong social element to the course because they incentivize students to ask and answer each other's questions. At the end of it, you have to go to a testing centre and give a 3 hour exam on everything they have taught you. I finished this course a few months ago and really enjoyed the material and all the people I met through it. Highly recommend!
shpx 11y ago
Geoff Hinton's (one of the most important guys in neural nets) coursera course from 2012 taught me most of what I know about neural nets (he starts with the basic sigmoid, backprop, convnets, dropout, RBMs and lstm nets). https://www.coursera.org/course/neuralnets https://www.coursera.org/course/neuralnets
erikbigelow 11y ago
So much for having any extra free time after reading these comments
dirtyaura 11y ago
Andrew Ng's machine learning course on Coursera. Surprisingly, I also found Khan Academy's organic chemistry videos very helpful when I was studying bioinformatics and needed to refresh my chemistry skills
rffn 11y ago
The Sedgewick/Wayne algorithm classes: https://www.coursera.org/course/algs4partI https://www.coursera.org/course/algs4partI and https://www.coursera.org/course/algs4partII https://www.coursera.org/course/algs4partII
manish_gill 11y ago
If anybody has a good course on Compilers except the old one that's on Coursera (which was decent but honestly the instructor wasn't amazing at holding my attention), that would be awesome. :)
- estefan 11y ago
  Just watch it at double speed and he only needs to hold your attention for half as long :-D - plus you really need to concentrate.
ctoomey 11y ago
Algorithms: Design and Analysis Parts 1 and 2 (https://www.coursera.org/course/algo https://www.coursera.org/course/algo and https://www.coursera.org/course/algo2 https://www.coursera.org/course/algo2) taught by Tim Roughgarden of Stanford. Tim's the best professor I've ever had either on or offline and he does a fantastic job explaining the concepts and breaking down the algorithms into digestible, intuitive pieces. His enthusiasm for the topic and the impressive algorithms is contagious and keeps the challenging courses fun and interesting. Functional Programming Principles in Scala (https://www.coursera.org/course/progfun https://www.coursera.org/course/progfun) by Martin Odersky, the inventor of Scala, is also excellent and a great way to learn and start using Scala and functional programming. Be forewarned though, once you get a taste of Scala, you'll have to be dragged kicking and screaming back to using Java :-).
- jedmeyers 11y ago
  Also, Algorithms, Part I and II (https://www.coursera.org/course/algs4partI https://www.coursera.org/course/algs4partI and https://www.coursera.org/course/algs4partII https://www.coursera.org/course/algs4partII) by Kevin Wayne and Robert Sedgewick of Princeton University. They approach algorithms from a slightly different angle than Stanford course does and in my opinion they complement each other very well. I was very impressed by the lectures, practical problems, the autograder, and the 'Algorythms 4th edition' book. p.s. don't expect any certificate of acomplishment for those courses though. I did them both close to 100% and they did not even show up in completed courses on Coursera. I guess it's the Princenton thing, and I came just for the knowledge so that was fine with me.
- truncate 11y ago
  Also MIT OCW lectures for Algorithms. These are old and video quality is not nice, but course is really good. I think they published a newer version of this course too. http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-046j-introduction-to-algorithms-sma-5503-fall-2005/video-lectures/ http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-comput...
- whitenoice 11y ago
  Here's another very well explained data structure and algorithms course lectures from IIT - http://nptel.ac.in/video.php?subjectId=106102064 http://nptel.ac.in/video.php?subjectId=106102064
truncate 11y ago
For statistics I really liked Data Analysis and Statistical Inference by Mine Çetinkaya-Rundel. I think I understood statistics beyond formulas after I took this course. Apart from typical pen and paper problems, you also get programming exercises in R. https://www.coursera.org/course/statistics https://www.coursera.org/course/statistics
- geomark 11y ago
  +1 I recently completed this course. It's really quite good.
uulbiy 11y ago
My Coursera profile lists 67 courses, I have completed ~15 of them and with a passing grade ~8 of them. My most favorite one, which for me was the hardest as well, was The Hardware/Software Interface by Gaetano Borriello and Luis Ceze[1]. I also liked Computer Networks[2] even though it's an introductory course, Functional Programming Principles in Scala[3] which is surprisingly easy unlike the follow up course[4], High Performance Scientific Computing[5], Software Security[6] and Cryptography[7] although I prefer Boneh's class. For non-IT related courses I liked Think Again: How to Reason and Argue[8], Crafting an Effective Writer: Tools of the Trade (Fundamental English Writing)[9], Child Nutrition and Cooking[10] and Work Smarter, Not Harder: Time Management for Personal & Professional Productivity[11]. I often take time to think why I have so many started but not finished courses. Most of them are abandoned on the first week and my assumption is that when I enroll my expectations for the course content and the workload needed are wrong. Occasionally, I abandon courses because they demand too much time to get something working on linux or because of luck of time. The thing that I noticed about me is that when I get a little behind the schedule then it's almost certainly that I will abandon the course. Additionally, when I try to commit on two courses at the same time then it's certain that I will abandon at least one (usually both). [1]: https://www.coursera.org/course/hwswinterface https://www.coursera.org/course/hwswinterface [2]: https://www.coursera.org/course/comnetworks https://www.coursera.org/course/comnetworks [3]: https://www.coursera.org/course/progfun https://www.coursera.org/course/progfun [4]: https://www.coursera.org/course/reactive https://www.coursera.org/course/reactive [5]: https://www.coursera.org/course/scicomp https://www.coursera.org/course/scicomp [6]: https://www.coursera.org/course/softwaresec https://www.coursera.org/course/softwaresec [7]: https://www.coursera.org/course/cryptography https://www.coursera.org/course/cryptography [8]: https://www.coursera.org/course/thinkagain https://www.coursera.org/course/thinkagain [9]: https://www.coursera.org/course/basicwriting https://www.coursera.org/course/basicwriting [10]: https://www.coursera.org/learn/childnutrition/home/welcome https://www.coursera.org/learn/childnutrition/home/welcome [11]: https://www.coursera.org/learn/work-smarter-not-harder/home/welcome https://www.coursera.org/learn/work-smarter-not-harder/home/...
liquidmetal 11y ago
Great suggestions here. Have you looked at this repository: https://github.com/prakhar1989/awesome-courses https://github.com/prakhar1989/awesome-courses It's a collection of some of the best courses on the internet. The topics covered is quite diverse - but mostly related to computer science.
jaysoncena 11y ago
Cloud Computing Concepts by Indranil Gupta https://www.coursera.org/course/cloudcomputing https://www.coursera.org/course/cloudcomputing I thought this was just about VPS, virtualization, NoSQL DBs but I was amazed that it also includes different algorithms for distributed systems like Gossips, MapReduce, Paxos, etc.
facepalm 11y ago
My favorite was Dan Ariely's Introduction to Irrational Behavior.
- estefan 11y ago
  Great course!
- qrendel 11y ago
  Seconded - perhaps not my absolute top favorite but definitely one of the most memorable I've taken.
tmpz 11y ago
Erik Meijer's FP101x Functional Programming (Haskell and others) https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-functional-programming-delftx-fp101x-0 https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-functional-programmi...
riffraff 11y ago
My technology related list includes most of the same courses already listed. But off-technology, the "modern history" class (which appears to have been split in two[0]) was incredibly entertaining and gripping in addition to being educational. [0] https://www.coursera.org/learn/modern-world https://www.coursera.org/learn/modern-world [1] https://www.coursera.org/learn/modern-world-2 https://www.coursera.org/learn/modern-world-2
Kurtz79 11y ago
Peter Norvig's "Design of Computer Programs" https://www.udacity.com/course/design-of-computer-programs--cs212 https://www.udacity.com/course/design-of-computer-programs--... An introduction to some semi-advanced programming concepts using an accessible language like Python, taught by a giant of CS. Steve Huffman's "Web Development" https://www.udacity.com/course/web-development--cs253 https://www.udacity.com/course/web-development--cs253 Basics of developing a web application, it uses Google App Engine as a base but the concepts taught are easily extensible to other platforms. Steve comes off as a likable and competent teacher.
thallian 11y ago
Not technology related: A Global History of Architecture: https://www.edx.org/course/global-history-architecture-mitx-4-605x3 https://www.edx.org/course/global-history-architecture-mitx-...
- RajuVarghese 11y ago
  I am currently doing this course and love every minute of it. The course is more of a history course than architecture per se. You will get a grand ride through the centuries all the way from 3000 BCE to the present.
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wobbleblob 11y ago
I loved this course: https://www.coursera.org/learn/origins-universe-solarsystem https://www.coursera.org/learn/origins-universe-solarsystem As the course progresses roughly chronologically (one theme per week) from the formation of the solar system to the present, it introduces the foundations and jargon of the disciplines of astronomy, geology, microbiology, paleontology, botany, ecology etc. For some reason I never finish courses that are directly relevant to my job. After an 8 or 9 hour day doing tech stuff to make a deadline, spending another 1 or 2 hours a night doing tech stuff to make a deadline starts to feel like more work. I find the general science courses much more interesting.
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Nonsns 11y ago
Roy Osherove 's TDD master class changed the way we worked at Aol.
headshot 11y ago
Peter Norvig's "Design of Computer Programs" on udacity.com
bartekko 11y ago
Something a bit different - I really enjoyed Robert's Electronics Design courses: http://www.fedevel.com/academy/schematic-pcb-design-course-online/ http://www.fedevel.com/academy/schematic-pcb-design-course-o... It teaches all the tips and tricks to make professional designs, a ton more practical knowledge than my university course or my first EE job.
tianyicui 11y ago
Buddhism and Modern Psychology by Robert Wright (author of The Moral Animal). It uses evolutionary psychology, modularity of mind, and other modern cognitive science theories to explain why some modern version of the buddhist teachings (like meditations) work. It includes interesting interviews and solid book/article recommendations. It's very eye-opening to me and gave me a whole new perspective about happiness and meaning in life. https://www.coursera.org/learn/science-of-meditation https://www.coursera.org/learn/science-of-meditation
- Rambunctious 11y ago
  On the subject of happiness, Prof Raj Raghunathan's "A Life of Happiness and Fulfillment" is also something I would highly recommend. The learner stands to gain a lot of insights on the types of motivations serve to enhance as well as undermine happiness. Check out https://www.coursera.org/learn/happiness https://www.coursera.org/learn/happiness Have changed for the better because of it :)
digitalzombie 11y ago
Andrew Ng's ML Stanford Online Class. This was before Coursera, the first one and the one that got me hooked into ML and Data Science. After a few years working in the work force I decided to go back to get a master in Statistic to get into this field once and for all.
hrnnnnnn 11y ago
Fundamentals of Music Theory. The instructors were really active in the facebook group, and took time to make extra videos to answer common questions. The quizzes were good and fairly marked, the exam was tough, but the peer-review guidelines for it were very clear and easy to follow. https://www.coursera.org/course/musictheory https://www.coursera.org/course/musictheory
c1 11y ago
YouTube CrashCourse
- kleer001 11y ago
  Anatomy & Physiology U.S. Government and Politics Economics Intellectual Property Astronomy Philosophy World History Literature Biology and more! https://www.youtube.com/user/crashcourse/playlists https://www.youtube.com/user/crashcourse/playlists
andyjohnson0 11y ago
Earlier this year I did the Stanford Introduction to Mathematical Thinking course on Coursera [1]. I found it fairly challenging but managed to finish with a distinction. The instructor was particularly good. I'm now working through UCSD Interaction Design specialisation [2], which is a series of courses followed by a project. So far its been very good, although the short course format (3-4 weeks) means that there isn't time for much of a community to form among the participants. I've learned a lot though. I'd recommend both courses. [1] https://www.coursera.org/course/maththink https://www.coursera.org/course/maththink [2] https://www.coursera.org/specializations/interaction-design https://www.coursera.org/specializations/interaction-design
- codexjourneys 11y ago
  I also loved the Mathematical Thinking course, it was the first MOOC I completed and still one of my favorites!
mrsuprawsm 11y ago
Duolingo: https://www.duolingo.com/ https://www.duolingo.com/ It's not tech-related, but I have achieved near-fluency in one language in less than a year (Dutch), and I'm currently learning 3-4 others. (Russian, German, French, Italian) I find it very effective and easy to fit in around everyday life. I would definitely recommend it to anyone else seeking to learn languages.
- rahimnathwani 11y ago
  Are you living in the Netherlands and/or doing any study outside Duolingo?
  - mrsuprawsm 11y ago
    I'm living there, but not doing any study outside of Duolingo. This seems to be sufficient to get by in daily life and social conversation.
  - halviti 11y ago
    You'll have to eventually study outside duolingo if you are serious about learning a language. I would recommend starting with the duolingo course, completing it, then keeping your tree gold while exploring other learning material. Start with children's books and work your way up. There are also a lot of language exchange chat sites that are good to help you get more comfortable speaking a new language, but you will need a partner to practice with at some point. Also I've found ReadLang (which I found on HN) to be a very helpful tool for faster learning, and I upload the majority of my ebooks into it. I hope this helps.
    - rahimnathwani 11y ago
      Thanks. I was curious because I was using Duolingo to help with my (very rusty) Spanish. I could see that it was helping me to recall vocabulary (and some grammar points) but I didn't see how it would help me improve my listening. Reading your comment, I thought you had achieved near-fluency in Dutch with just Duolingo, and thought perhaps there was some functionality I had missed! Thanks for the pointer to ReadLang. The click-to-translate and immediate ability to add to a flashcard list are similar to the features I used most in Pleco (dictionary on steroids) when I first started seriously studying Chinese. I'll give Readlang a try.
Pamar 11y ago
I really enjoied Introduction to Operations Management (https://www.coursera.org/learn/wharton-operations https://www.coursera.org/learn/wharton-operations) which is not about CS/IT but more about organizing process workflow (i.e. how to make shops, plants or any kind of multi-operator job more efficient). I also liked a Coursera one titled "Data Analysis" but the url now returns a 404 (https://www.coursera.org/course/dataanalysis https://www.coursera.org/course/dataanalysis) and it probably morphed in something slightly different.
harveylord 11y ago
I found this course on European painting between 1400 to 1800 to be both well organised/presented and very beneficial in every area of life: https://www.edx.org/course/european-paintings-leonardo-rembrandt-uc3mx-ceh-1-enx https://www.edx.org/course/european-paintings-leonardo-rembr....
sidcool 11y ago
Great replies! Thanks guys!
- wkoszek 11y ago
  Feel free to consolidate the list and publish somewhere. This thread got lenghty.
mrgraeme 11y ago
Eric Lander's incredible 'Introduction to Biology - The Secret of Life' was my first step away from data analysis for online marketing clients (which I didn't love) to bioinformatics (which I do very much love) https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-biology-secret-life-mitx-7-00x-2 https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-biology-secret-life-... A Fantastic course from a legendary educator.
- bewe42 11y ago
  I'd like to second this. I had only slight interest in Biology but got completely hooked into the course because the teacher makes things so plausible and exciting. I wish one could do bioinformatics remotely, I'd seriously change careers ;)
citeguised 11y ago
The Javascript-Courses by Anthony Alicea on Udemy are by far the best I ever spent money on in terms of learning to code. https://www.udemy.com/user/anthonypalicea/ https://www.udemy.com/user/anthonypalicea/
maurits 11y ago
Convolutional Networks from Stanford [1]. No video, but comes with a wonderful set of ipython notebooks to illustrate and work with cnn's. Statistical Mechanics Algorithms and Computations [2]. Very well done video's shot in a studio with a green screen. Comes with massive amounts of small python programs to illustrate the material. [1]: http://cs231n.stanford.edu/ http://cs231n.stanford.edu/ [2]: https://www.coursera.org/course/smac https://www.coursera.org/course/smac
BillySquid 11y ago
Coursera Calculus 1 - https://www.coursera.org/learn/calculus1/home/welcome https://www.coursera.org/learn/calculus1/home/welcome , Jim Fowler makes Calculus a very entertaining topic.
estefan 11y ago
Can anyone recommend a course on business organisation? I'm planning on starting a startup and want to round out my business knowledge as to who I should hire. I want to stay in charge of tech & strategy while letting someone else manage finance, hr, etc. I couldn't find a single one that actually explains what a CEO does on coursera/edx/novoed.
- akulbe 11y ago
  I would highly recommend "The Personal MBA" by Josh Kaufman. He also lists several other good books in there. Even if you're not in charge of the entire business, you'll have a good idea of the "big picture" of how it runs.
- tmbsundar 11y ago
  Try Steve Blank's How to Build a Startup. Link: https://www.udacity.com/course/how-to-build-a-startup--ep245 https://www.udacity.com/course/how-to-build-a-startup--ep245
  - estefan 11y ago
    This doesn't seem to cover business organisation either. I know there are plenty of these "how to start a startup" courses, but i'm looking to fill in a specific niche of knowledge, not have to sift through another general course. That said I've heard great things about "4 steps" but haven't got round to reading it yet so I guess it's worth a watch based on the instructor, so thanks anyway.
menticolcito 11y ago
https://courses.platzi.com/ https://courses.platzi.com/, there are like 70 courses in Spanish (frontend, backend, marketing, DBA, DevOps, android and apple development) but they also have 16 in English, most of them are talks with the best YC startups CEOs and founders.
manish_gill 11y ago
Can't edit my earlier comment, so making a new one: There are quite a few people on HN who are great at Economics and Finance. Could someone recommend some courses and texts (and hopefully a "path") for a complete beginner to understand it? I'd like to be able to better understand things like the FT and all the stats that CNBC shows me etc. Also hopefully get skilled enough to start investing in the market. Not to mention, broad economical trends and projections etc. Thanks!
- tmbsundar 11y ago
  What do you mean by FT? "Financial Technology" or "Futures Trading"?
  - manish_gill 11y ago
    Financial Technology, but I guess Future Tradings would also be something I would want to learn? I'm at the beginner stage where I don't know what I need to know! But my long term goal is to combine my CS background with Finance and do something interesting in it, if that makes any sense.
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- mynegation 11y ago
  Have recommended that before: CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst) preparation materials. You can buy used ones for cheap as they lose their value extremely fast for people preparing for the exam, but small changes of accounting regulations should not concern you if you are reading just to educated yourself. They might seem overwhelming, but I am yet to find another set of books with such neatly organized and concentrated material on Economics and Finance.
  - manish_gill 11y ago
    Thanks, will check them out.
- 11y ago
awjr 11y ago
I've found Deborah Kurata's course content good https://www.pluralsight.com/authors/deborah-kurata https://www.pluralsight.com/authors/deborah-kurata in particular https://www.pluralsight.com/courses/angularjs-line-of-business-applications https://www.pluralsight.com/courses/angularjs-line-of-busine... My only issue is her voice can be very monotonous and I find it hard to do more than an hour without having to walk away and wake myself up. Her course content is very good though.
tmbsundar 11y ago
Learning from Data by Caltech Professor Yaser Abu-Mostafa : https://work.caltech.edu/telecourse.html https://work.caltech.edu/telecourse.html. There was an edX version last year MMDS: Mining Massive Datasets by Stanford professors Jure Leskovec, Anand Rajaraman,Jeff Ullman, Link: https://www.coursera.org/course/mmds https://www.coursera.org/course/mmds Neural Networks for Machine Learning: Geoffrey Hinton, Link: https://www.coursera.org/course/neuralnets https://www.coursera.org/course/neuralnets Artificial Intelligence for Robotics: Programming a Robotic Car, Sebastian Thrun Link: https://www.udacity.com/course/artificial-intelligence-for-robotics--cs373 https://www.udacity.com/course/artificial-intelligence-for-r... Intro to Artificial Intelligence, Peter Norvig & Sebastian Thrun. This was the one which started it all in 2011, joined a little late by Andrew Ng's ML course which has been mentioned already. Intro to Artificial Intelligence link: https://www.udacity.com/course/intro-to-artificial-intelligence--cs271 https://www.udacity.com/course/intro-to-artificial-intellige...
- alkalait 11y ago
  I enjoyed MMDS, but the lectures given by Ulman were painful to sit through. The man could simply not deliver a single sentence not read verbatim from a screen.
  - roye 11y ago
    same here, had to watch some of those lectures at 2x speed
- Hortinstein 11y ago
  I took Mr. Thrun's class on Programming a Robotic Car last year for part of my OMSCS classes at GA Tech. They should use classes like this in undergrad computer science to show why Linear Algebra will be so important and the amazing applications you can do with it. Highly recommended.
alador 11y ago
IMHO, the best course website is http://www.freecodecamp.com/ http://www.freecodecamp.com/ to learn Modern App Development.
nibs 11y ago
Learn to Program: The Fundamentals by U of T on Coursera https://www.coursera.org/course/programming1 https://www.coursera.org/course/programming1 Did not see any other mentions. It was excellent.
mark_l_watson 11y ago
I took Andrew Ng's machine learning class twice (scored >99% both times). That was my favorite. I have been working in the AI field since the 1980s, including a lot of neural network applications, but I still found his class to be an incredible source of practical knowledge. Other favorites were Martin Odersky's functional programming with Scala and Erik Meijer's Haskell class at eDX.
tmaly 11y ago
Can anyone recommend their favorite way to learn foreign languages? I am curious if there are any new online courses that have made improvements in this area.
- fnsa 11y ago
  I have done a lot of progress in German using Duolingo. Memrise helps with vocabulary too.
- marai2 11y ago
  Not new - but I had the most fun and most progress with learning French with https://www.duolingo.com/ https://www.duolingo.com/ My kids got into it as well and at one point we would all sit together and do one lesson a day.
wkoszek 11y ago
I liked CodeSchool: not everything there is great, but is very good overall, has a great structure and can teach you many technologies.
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395 points by sidcool 11y ago

Better if technology related, but an open question nevertheless.

https://www.coursera.org/course/rprog https://www.coursera.org/course/rprog - This is the best online course I've taken. Another one I am signed up for and have already done one week of lectures (preview mode) and find very applicable is https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn/ https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn/

area51org 11y ago
Thanks for posting this.
dhawalhs 11y ago
Interestingly we get a lot of mixed reviews for R Prog course: https://www.class-central.com/mooc/1713/coursera-r-programming#reviews https://www.class-central.com/mooc/1713/coursera-r-programmi... Learning how to learn is the best course online that any one can take.
- sonabinu 11y ago
  I blogged my experience with learning R here - http://datagrad.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-r-learning-curve.html http://datagrad.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-r-learning-curve.ht... and with the class here - http://datagrad.blogspot.com/2013/01/my-most-recent-mooc-experience.html http://datagrad.blogspot.com/2013/01/my-most-recent-mooc-exp...
- 1wheel 11y ago
  I though Jenny Bryan's R class had more modern take on R that was significantly easier to follow. https://stat545-ubc.github.io/ https://stat545-ubc.github.io/ Even with some R experience I didn't feel like I got enough information from the R Prog lectures to complete the assignments.
- scrollaway 11y ago
  I've been spending the past hour on "Leaning how to learn" because of the recommendations here. I was... well, the course was definitely not quite what I expected. What I'm seeing here is a bunch of "tricks", and a lot of "brain facts" which I would usually dismiss as pseudoscience. The course almost feels like a scam. What gives?
  - dhawalhs 11y ago
    All of the course content is based on the hard science, but is simplified so that every one can understand. You can look at the background of one of the course instructor: https://www.coursera.org/instructor/terry https://www.coursera.org/instructor/terry
thmcmahon 11y ago
I also found the r programming class to be super useful.
nl 11y ago
I didn't think the R course was that great. I only did the first course in the speciality but I thought the assignments didn't match the lectures very well. I don't really know R but I still got through OK (100%) but it didn't compare well with the EdX AMPLab Spark course I did around the same time.
pedrodelfino 11y ago
Learning how to learn is really cool! Best time investment I have ever made.

middleclick 11y ago

Dan Boneh's "Introduction to Cryptography". (Part 1) https://www.coursera.org/course/crypto https://www.coursera.org/course/crypto (Part 2) https://www.coursera.org/course/crypto2 https://www.coursera.org/course/crypto2

zzmxleo 11y ago
Yeah, the course is really cool.
calvins 11y ago
+1 for Dan's crypto1. I don't think crypto2 has been taught yet via coursera, as I've been waiting to take it and have seen it pushed back several times, and I've seen others say they'd been watching it get delayed for years. It does seem that Dan has been recording videos for part 2 in 2015 though (according to one of his students), so there's reason for hope that it might happen in 2016.
- nindalf 11y ago
  I think we'll know in a couple of weeks if its going to start on Jan 11th or not. If its not ready yet, it'll be pushed back by a month or two by mid December. That's how the previous postponements were done.
- uulbiy 11y ago
  I finished Cryptography I in March 2012 and wanted to take Cryptography II ever since. Every time the announced time is close it gets pushed back by 4 months.
kbart 11y ago
I came here to say the same. A really, really good course, a must to everyone who's interested in cryptography.
Kurtz79 11y ago
I did part 1 and liked it a lot. I also liked Udacity crypto course, less formal but with great "hands on" exercises: https://www.udacity.com/course/applied-cryptography--cs387 https://www.udacity.com/course/applied-cryptography--cs387

jpetitto 11y ago

"Programming Languages" - https://www.coursera.org/course/proglang https://www.coursera.org/course/proglang "Compilers" - https://www.coursera.org/course/compilers https://www.coursera.org/course/compilers

ooooak 11y ago
are you me ?
thisone 11y ago
Programming Languages is one of those courses that just keeps on giving. A great basis for functional and Lisp fundamentals. I'm just starting a journey into Erlang and that course has meant that the switch isn't as difficult as it could have been. The course format was interesting. I'm not 100% on board with doing peer assessment, but I did like being able to see how other people handled the assignments.

zzmxleo 11y ago

The Hardware/Software Interface - https://class.coursera.org/hwswinterface-002 https://class.coursera.org/hwswinterface-002 This course is amazing, especially for the assignments.

lindbergh 11y ago

Convex Optimization by Stephen Boyd (Stanford EE364A) available on itunesU. There's also a CVX101 Mooc[1], but I don't how it's different from the original material. IMO it's not the topic itself, but the invaluable material for machine learning, statistics and applied mathematics. And Boyd has such a huge insight on the topic it's always a pleasure to watch his lectures. [1]https://lagunita.stanford.edu/courses/Engineering/CVX101/Winter2014/about https://lagunita.stanford.edu/courses/Engineering/CVX101/Win...

_raoulcousins 11y ago
Thanks for sharing! On iTunes U are there assignments or other course materials, or just the video lectures? I only see the videos there and I'd like to get my hands dirty practicing assignments and not just watch the lectures.
- lindbergh 11y ago
  Then I suggest the website of the course where you can find homework and lots of material. You can follow the course as if you were enrolled. Also the free pdf copy of the book will certainly be useful. http://stanford.edu/class/ee364a/index.html http://stanford.edu/class/ee364a/index.html http://stanford.edu/~boyd/cvxbook/ http://stanford.edu/~boyd/cvxbook/

kevindeasis 11y ago

It has been over a year and I haven't finished it yet, but I find it the most interesting. It's Harvard's philosophy course [1] Also, intro to comp sci by Harvard's open courseware. Without these, I might've dropped out of comp sci in my second year [2] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBdfcR-8hEY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBdfcR-8hEY [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-OxzIC6pic&list=PLvJoKWRPIu8G6Si7LlvmBPA5rOJ9BA29R https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-OxzIC6pic&list=PLvJoKWRPIu...

deleted 11y ago
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dools 11y ago

mixergy.com

kenrick95 11y ago

CS188.1x Artificial Intelligence by BerkeleyX at edx.org. [1] I took this course back in Spring 2013 and I really enjoy the course project of making an intelligent Pac-Man. :) Through this course, besides learning AI, I also learned Python (before this, I didn't know how to code in Python at all). And with the knowledge from this course, I made a simple connect four game with AI implementation as the player's opponent. [2] [1] https://www.edx.org/course/artificial-intelligence-uc-berkeleyx-cs188-1x https://www.edx.org/course/artificial-intelligence-uc-berkel... [2] http://kenrick95.github.io/c4/demo/ http://kenrick95.github.io/c4/demo/

manish_gill 11y ago
Taking this course right now. Just about to start Homework 2. Awesome stuff. I've laid out a curriculum for myself starting from this course and ending in ML expertise. :D

zan5hin 11y ago

Developing iOS 8 Apps with Swift https://itunes.apple.com/us/course/developing-ios-8-apps-swift/id961180099 https://itunes.apple.com/us/course/developing-ios-8-apps-swi...

cjauvin 11y ago

Discrete Optimization https://www.coursera.org/course/optimization https://www.coursera.org/course/optimization -- I really enjoyed this challenging class with a very dynamic teacher, and organized around a set of tough problems that you can tackle using a choice of optimization paradigms (e.g. you can decide to "specialize" in "local search" if you want, and try to solve eveything with it).

piggybox 11y ago
I did that and it was super fun

tmlee 11y ago

I see a lot of tech related courses in this discussion; here is something off the wall if you are into "Coffee making" https://www.skillshare.com/classes/culinary/From-Plant-to-Cup-Brew-an-Amazing-Cup-of-Coffee/351651108 https://www.skillshare.com/classes/culinary/From-Plant-to-Cu... Made by the guys from The Blue Bottle, splendid tutorial!

samwgoldman 11y ago

I haven't taken many online courses, but here are my favorites (notice a trend): Andrew Ng's ML Class - This makes the list because it is incredibly useful. I didn't have much background in the field and this class is a practical survey of ideas. Not a ton of depth, but exposes you to a lot of information gently. Daphne Koller's PGM Class - This was the most rewarding. I banged my head on a lot of this material, but it was an incredible feeling when things started to click. That I was able to complete this class is a testament to Dr. Koller's excellence as an educator. Dan Jurafsky's and Christopher Manning's NLP Class - This class was the most fun. I thought the exercises were incredibly well designed. Unlike the first two courses, the exercises were a lot more interesting. For ML and PGM, you mostly know when you have the answer and you are rewarded with 100%. NLP assignments are based on how well your system generalizes, which made me try harder to improve my systems, and helped me enjoy the course.

iraphael 11y ago
NLP has been on my watchlist for a semester now. No word on when future sessions will happen. I'm about to give up on that and just watch the old videos. Too bad I won't get the assignments :/
- eliben 11y ago
  Can't you still do the old assignments?
anoopelias 11y ago
Links, Andrew Ng's ML Class - https://www.coursera.org/learn/machine-learning https://www.coursera.org/learn/machine-learning Daphne Koller's PGM Class - https://www.coursera.org/course/pgm https://www.coursera.org/course/pgm Dan Jurafsky's and Christopher Manning's NLP Class - https://www.coursera.org/course/nlp https://www.coursera.org/course/nlp
platz 11y ago
Koller's PGM was fun but very hard to generalize outside of the problems presented in the class. Opportunities to implement loopy belief propagation just don't seem to come up as much ad I'd like.

dbcooper 11y ago

Can anyone recommend a bioinformatics course (esp. an intro level one)?

lujayne 11y ago
I've only just started it, but this looks great in terms of the content they cover, and they also provide quite a few programming tasks. https://class.coursera.org/hiddenmessages-006 https://class.coursera.org/hiddenmessages-006

senith 11y ago

Not technology related but I personally like Aswath Damodaran's valuation courses http://www.graduatetutor.com/corporate-finance-tutoring/aswath-damodaran-tutoring/ http://www.graduatetutor.com/corporate-finance-tutoring/aswa...

nihils 11y ago

Abstract Algebra by Benedict Gross from the Harvard Extension School.

auvrw 11y ago
this looks like [+] an excellent course, if only b/c it uses a text by Artin. [+] http://wayback.archive-it.org/3671/20150529001651/https://www.extension.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/openlearning/math222/files/OLI_MathE222_Syllabus.pdf http://wayback.archive-it.org/3671/20150529001651/https://ww...

dfan 11y ago

MIT's 8.05x, Mastering Quantum Mechanics (https://www.edx.org/course/mastering-quantum-mechanics-mitx-8-05x https://www.edx.org/course/mastering-quantum-mechanics-mitx-...) It's the only MOOC I've taken that was anywhere close to the kind of experience I had as an actual undergraduate at MIT. Outstanding lectures with accompanying lecture notes, challenging but rewarding problem sets, lots of interaction by the professor and other staff in the forums. It's not a course in the sense of having problem sets and grades, but V. Balakrishnan's lecture series on classical physics (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5E4E56893588CBA8 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5E4E56893588CBA8) is amazing, just incredibly dense with insight.

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Yeroc 11y ago

I haven't taken many online courses but my wife & I just took the course "Learning How to Learn" (https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn) together and I wish this was available before I went to university. They do a great job of presenting the content and provide a lot of references for additional reading for those that have a deeper interest. It should probably be considered the pre-requisite to all other online courses!

sferoze 11y ago

Marvin Minsky, Society of Mind Class Lecture Playlist on Youtube - https://youtu.be/-pb3z2w9gDg?list=PLqw2b1BiJEx8Ii2RJBk9C0iC3pG__EpSJ https://youtu.be/-pb3z2w9gDg?list=PLqw2b1BiJEx8Ii2RJBk9C0iC3...

mrestko 11y ago

As a medical student, I though the Coursera course on Clinical Problem Solving was quite good: https://www.coursera.org/course/clinprobsolv https://www.coursera.org/course/clinprobsolv

omilu 11y ago

sicp is the best programming course hands down. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Op3QLzMgSY&list=PLB63C06FAF154F047 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Op3QLzMgSY&list=PLB63C06FAF...

ChicagoBoy11 11y ago
Dat music, tho.

glennos 11y ago

Paid, but I got a lot of this course for learning Ruby/Rails https://www.gotealeaf.com/ https://www.gotealeaf.com/

kregasaurusrex 11y ago

Introduction to Cryptography, by Christof Paar. His book ' Understanding Cryptography: A Textbook for Students and Practitioners' also provides great insight to the subject. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aHkqB2-46k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aHkqB2-46k

nwjtkjn 11y ago

https://www.coursera.org/course/algs4partI https://www.coursera.org/course/algs4partI https://www.coursera.org/course/algs4partII https://www.coursera.org/course/algs4partII I took these to prepare for first-job interviews coming out of grad school. Got an offer from a company frequently mentioned on this site, so I guess they helped.

uvu 11y ago

This is CS50! https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-computer-science-harvardx-cs50x https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-computer-science-har...

marincounty 11y ago
The Harvard computer sci course really helped me out. I didn't take the class, but put all classes on my iPod. I would listen to lectures while exercising at night. This course really helped me understand the ever changing computer lingo. I probally should have done the lessons. Once you get used to the vocabulary, and all the acronyms--it's all starts to fall into place.
shpx 11y ago
This is how I got into programming, some people laughed at me for learning C as my first language, but I think it paid off.

damian2000 11y ago

Engineering Software as a Service: An Agile Approach Using Cloud Computing http://www.saasbook.info/courses http://www.saasbook.info/courses

thecolorblue 11y ago

Yale has a great class on Game Theory. It provides some alternatives to solving problems from the normal CS algorithms. http://oyc.yale.edu/economics/econ-159 http://oyc.yale.edu/economics/econ-159

hendry 11y ago

I dare say Ryan Kroonenburg's https://www.udemy.com/aws-certified-developer-associate-2015/ https://www.udemy.com/aws-certified-developer-associate-2015... Also if you're into getting into making videos, https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/lessons-for-final-cut-pro-x/id952621966?mt=12 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/lessons-for-final-cut-pro-x/... was surprisingly good 10 bucks spent.

valgaze 11y ago

Dr. Strang's linear algebra course is absolutely amazing: http://web.mit.edu/18.06/www/videos.shtml http://web.mit.edu/18.06/www/videos.shtml https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_Strang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_Strang

it_learnses 11y ago
i watched these many years ago when i was in university. So much clarity in these! I'm eternally grateful for MIT putting these up.
yoklov 11y ago
You (or anybody else, for that matter) don't happen to know of something similar for geometric algebra, do you?

Adam_O 11y ago

My all star lineup would be: The Analytics Edge - https://www.edx.org/course/analytics-edge-mitx-15-071x-0 https://www.edx.org/course/analytics-edge-mitx-15-071x-0 Design of Computer Programs - https://www.udacity.com/course/design-of-computer-programs--cs212 https://www.udacity.com/course/design-of-computer-programs--... Justice - https://www.edx.org/course/justice-harvardx-er22-1x-0 https://www.edx.org/course/justice-harvardx-er22-1x-0 If I had more time I would love to go through the bioinformatics specialization on Coursera. They have 2 books and an exercise site (rosalind.info). It looks like great fun. https://www.coursera.org/specializations/bioinformatics?utm_medium=courseDescripTop https://www.coursera.org/specializations/bioinformatics?utm_...

amykhar 11y ago
Design of Computer Programs was decidedly the best course I ever took online. I was lucky enough to take it when it was first offered. Peter Norvig was very active in the course forum.
geomark 11y ago
+1 for The Analytics Edge. Along the same lines but a more thorough treatment of linear regression and statistical inference is the excellent Data Analysis and Statistical Inference https://www.coursera.org/course/statistics https://www.coursera.org/course/statistics

jatemack 11y ago

Best general CS class I have found so far. Well laid out, easy to follow, and very informative. http://csfieldguide.org.nz/index.html http://csfieldguide.org.nz/index.html

tagawa 11y ago

It's not technical but the best I've taken so far is Songwriting on Coursera: https://www.coursera.org/learn/songwriting https://www.coursera.org/learn/songwriting Presented by Pat Pattison from Berklee College of Music, I started the course thinking who is this guy? By the end I was hanging off his every word. Even if you've never thought of writing a song it opens your eyes to the talent (and tricks!) in the music business.

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dasboth 11y ago
I took the "Developing your Musicianship" and "Jazz Improvisation" courses, which I believe are in the same specialisation. The first one was at a very basic level and the improv was one was more advanced, but both were excellent. Highly recommended for aspiring musicians. Good to hear a recommendation for the Songwriting course, thanks, I'll check it out.
- makeset 11y ago
  I also started Songwriting and Jazz Improvisation, and while both had outstanding content and instruction, the peer-grading of assignments was a complete failure and forced me to quit the coursework timeline. Aside from reviewing others' work being a huge time sink, all feedback I ever got myself was completely useless, like "You did everything in the instructions, but I don't like this" or "Gee, I don't know enough to tell you how to do this any better." I would have gladly paid to get qualified feedback.
  - dasboth 11y ago
    You're right, I should have mentioned that, as I actually had a similar experience. A lot of the comments I received were also along the lines of "that's great" (when I knew it wasn't and I was actually looking forward to some constructive criticism from someone better than me) or, as you mentioned, the classic "I don't know enough to help you". Paying for qualified feedback would have made it better, although I still felt like I took a lot away from the taught content.

cordovas 11y ago

KhanAcademy! I would have to say anything on KhanAcademy. Sal Khan just does an incredible job of explaining things. I particularly like his statistics course as a good primer into stats or if you need to quickly brush up on the subject https://www.khanacademy.org/math/probability/statistics-inferential https://www.khanacademy.org/math/probability/statistics-infe...

dasboth 11y ago
Seconded. Brought my linear algebra and probability theory up to scratch within a day. I don't know what it is about how he explains the material, but it just clicked for me first time, every time.

jestinjoy1 11y ago

I a compsci grad. My favorite one is The Hardware/Software Interface: https://www.coursera.org/course/hwswinterface https://www.coursera.org/course/hwswinterface

aaggarwal 11y ago

Now the MOOCs are all popular, there are a lot of interesting courses out there, but I feel the best one is still the first online course I took in 2012, the pilot from edX (MITx at that time) - 6.002x Circuits and Electronics (https://6002x.mitx.mit.edu https://6002x.mitx.mit.edu) by Dr. Anant Agarwal and Dr. Gerald Sussman. It's an awesome course that introduces one to the electronics that goes behind modern day computers and smartphones. It really helped me understand how things work and what questions to ask.

adi92 11y ago

HBX Core http://hbx.hbs.edu/hbx-core http://hbx.hbs.edu/hbx-core Its a paid online business course by Harvard Business School with 3 modules - Business Analytics, Economics for Managers, Financial Accounting Material is not super challenging (maybe except for Accounting), but its still a lot of work and very rewarding. There is a strong social element to the course because they incentivize students to ask and answer each other's questions. At the end of it, you have to go to a testing centre and give a 3 hour exam on everything they have taught you. I finished this course a few months ago and really enjoyed the material and all the people I met through it. Highly recommend!

shpx 11y ago

Geoff Hinton's (one of the most important guys in neural nets) coursera course from 2012 taught me most of what I know about neural nets (he starts with the basic sigmoid, backprop, convnets, dropout, RBMs and lstm nets). https://www.coursera.org/course/neuralnets https://www.coursera.org/course/neuralnets

erikbigelow 11y ago

So much for having any extra free time after reading these comments

dirtyaura 11y ago

Andrew Ng's machine learning course on Coursera. Surprisingly, I also found Khan Academy's organic chemistry videos very helpful when I was studying bioinformatics and needed to refresh my chemistry skills

rffn 11y ago

The Sedgewick/Wayne algorithm classes: https://www.coursera.org/course/algs4partI https://www.coursera.org/course/algs4partI and https://www.coursera.org/course/algs4partII https://www.coursera.org/course/algs4partII

manish_gill 11y ago

If anybody has a good course on Compilers except the old one that's on Coursera (which was decent but honestly the instructor wasn't amazing at holding my attention), that would be awesome. :)

estefan 11y ago
Just watch it at double speed and he only needs to hold your attention for half as long :-D - plus you really need to concentrate.

ctoomey 11y ago

Algorithms: Design and Analysis Parts 1 and 2 (https://www.coursera.org/course/algo https://www.coursera.org/course/algo and https://www.coursera.org/course/algo2 https://www.coursera.org/course/algo2) taught by Tim Roughgarden of Stanford. Tim's the best professor I've ever had either on or offline and he does a fantastic job explaining the concepts and breaking down the algorithms into digestible, intuitive pieces. His enthusiasm for the topic and the impressive algorithms is contagious and keeps the challenging courses fun and interesting. Functional Programming Principles in Scala (https://www.coursera.org/course/progfun https://www.coursera.org/course/progfun) by Martin Odersky, the inventor of Scala, is also excellent and a great way to learn and start using Scala and functional programming. Be forewarned though, once you get a taste of Scala, you'll have to be dragged kicking and screaming back to using Java :-).

jedmeyers 11y ago
Also, Algorithms, Part I and II (https://www.coursera.org/course/algs4partI https://www.coursera.org/course/algs4partI and https://www.coursera.org/course/algs4partII https://www.coursera.org/course/algs4partII) by Kevin Wayne and Robert Sedgewick of Princeton University. They approach algorithms from a slightly different angle than Stanford course does and in my opinion they complement each other very well. I was very impressed by the lectures, practical problems, the autograder, and the 'Algorythms 4th edition' book. p.s. don't expect any certificate of acomplishment for those courses though. I did them both close to 100% and they did not even show up in completed courses on Coursera. I guess it's the Princenton thing, and I came just for the knowledge so that was fine with me.
truncate 11y ago
Also MIT OCW lectures for Algorithms. These are old and video quality is not nice, but course is really good. I think they published a newer version of this course too. http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-046j-introduction-to-algorithms-sma-5503-fall-2005/video-lectures/ http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-comput...
whitenoice 11y ago
Here's another very well explained data structure and algorithms course lectures from IIT - http://nptel.ac.in/video.php?subjectId=106102064 http://nptel.ac.in/video.php?subjectId=106102064

truncate 11y ago

For statistics I really liked Data Analysis and Statistical Inference by Mine Çetinkaya-Rundel. I think I understood statistics beyond formulas after I took this course. Apart from typical pen and paper problems, you also get programming exercises in R. https://www.coursera.org/course/statistics https://www.coursera.org/course/statistics

geomark 11y ago
+1 I recently completed this course. It's really quite good.

uulbiy 11y ago

My Coursera profile lists 67 courses, I have completed ~15 of them and with a passing grade ~8 of them. My most favorite one, which for me was the hardest as well, was The Hardware/Software Interface by Gaetano Borriello and Luis Ceze[1]. I also liked Computer Networks[2] even though it's an introductory course, Functional Programming Principles in Scala[3] which is surprisingly easy unlike the follow up course[4], High Performance Scientific Computing[5], Software Security[6] and Cryptography[7] although I prefer Boneh's class. For non-IT related courses I liked Think Again: How to Reason and Argue[8], Crafting an Effective Writer: Tools of the Trade (Fundamental English Writing)[9], Child Nutrition and Cooking[10] and Work Smarter, Not Harder: Time Management for Personal & Professional Productivity[11]. I often take time to think why I have so many started but not finished courses. Most of them are abandoned on the first week and my assumption is that when I enroll my expectations for the course content and the workload needed are wrong. Occasionally, I abandon courses because they demand too much time to get something working on linux or because of luck of time. The thing that I noticed about me is that when I get a little behind the schedule then it's almost certainly that I will abandon the course. Additionally, when I try to commit on two courses at the same time then it's certain that I will abandon at least one (usually both). [1]: https://www.coursera.org/course/hwswinterface https://www.coursera.org/course/hwswinterface [2]: https://www.coursera.org/course/comnetworks https://www.coursera.org/course/comnetworks [3]: https://www.coursera.org/course/progfun https://www.coursera.org/course/progfun [4]: https://www.coursera.org/course/reactive https://www.coursera.org/course/reactive [5]: https://www.coursera.org/course/scicomp https://www.coursera.org/course/scicomp [6]: https://www.coursera.org/course/softwaresec https://www.coursera.org/course/softwaresec [7]: https://www.coursera.org/course/cryptography https://www.coursera.org/course/cryptography [8]: https://www.coursera.org/course/thinkagain https://www.coursera.org/course/thinkagain [9]: https://www.coursera.org/course/basicwriting https://www.coursera.org/course/basicwriting [10]: https://www.coursera.org/learn/childnutrition/home/welcome https://www.coursera.org/learn/childnutrition/home/welcome [11]: https://www.coursera.org/learn/work-smarter-not-harder/home/welcome https://www.coursera.org/learn/work-smarter-not-harder/home/...

liquidmetal 11y ago

Great suggestions here. Have you looked at this repository: https://github.com/prakhar1989/awesome-courses https://github.com/prakhar1989/awesome-courses It's a collection of some of the best courses on the internet. The topics covered is quite diverse - but mostly related to computer science.

jaysoncena 11y ago

Cloud Computing Concepts by Indranil Gupta https://www.coursera.org/course/cloudcomputing https://www.coursera.org/course/cloudcomputing I thought this was just about VPS, virtualization, NoSQL DBs but I was amazed that it also includes different algorithms for distributed systems like Gossips, MapReduce, Paxos, etc.

facepalm 11y ago

My favorite was Dan Ariely's Introduction to Irrational Behavior.

estefan 11y ago
Great course!
qrendel 11y ago
Seconded - perhaps not my absolute top favorite but definitely one of the most memorable I've taken.

tmpz 11y ago

Erik Meijer's FP101x Functional Programming (Haskell and others) https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-functional-programming-delftx-fp101x-0 https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-functional-programmi...

riffraff 11y ago

My technology related list includes most of the same courses already listed. But off-technology, the "modern history" class (which appears to have been split in two[0]) was incredibly entertaining and gripping in addition to being educational. [0] https://www.coursera.org/learn/modern-world https://www.coursera.org/learn/modern-world [1] https://www.coursera.org/learn/modern-world-2 https://www.coursera.org/learn/modern-world-2

Kurtz79 11y ago

Peter Norvig's "Design of Computer Programs" https://www.udacity.com/course/design-of-computer-programs--cs212 https://www.udacity.com/course/design-of-computer-programs--... An introduction to some semi-advanced programming concepts using an accessible language like Python, taught by a giant of CS. Steve Huffman's "Web Development" https://www.udacity.com/course/web-development--cs253 https://www.udacity.com/course/web-development--cs253 Basics of developing a web application, it uses Google App Engine as a base but the concepts taught are easily extensible to other platforms. Steve comes off as a likable and competent teacher.

thallian 11y ago

Not technology related: A Global History of Architecture: https://www.edx.org/course/global-history-architecture-mitx-4-605x3 https://www.edx.org/course/global-history-architecture-mitx-...

RajuVarghese 11y ago
I am currently doing this course and love every minute of it. The course is more of a history course than architecture per se. You will get a grand ride through the centuries all the way from 3000 BCE to the present.

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wobbleblob 11y ago

I loved this course: https://www.coursera.org/learn/origins-universe-solarsystem https://www.coursera.org/learn/origins-universe-solarsystem As the course progresses roughly chronologically (one theme per week) from the formation of the solar system to the present, it introduces the foundations and jargon of the disciplines of astronomy, geology, microbiology, paleontology, botany, ecology etc. For some reason I never finish courses that are directly relevant to my job. After an 8 or 9 hour day doing tech stuff to make a deadline, spending another 1 or 2 hours a night doing tech stuff to make a deadline starts to feel like more work. I find the general science courses much more interesting.

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Nonsns 11y ago

Roy Osherove 's TDD master class changed the way we worked at Aol.

headshot 11y ago

Peter Norvig's "Design of Computer Programs" on udacity.com

bartekko 11y ago

Something a bit different - I really enjoyed Robert's Electronics Design courses: http://www.fedevel.com/academy/schematic-pcb-design-course-online/ http://www.fedevel.com/academy/schematic-pcb-design-course-o... It teaches all the tips and tricks to make professional designs, a ton more practical knowledge than my university course or my first EE job.

tianyicui 11y ago

Buddhism and Modern Psychology by Robert Wright (author of The Moral Animal). It uses evolutionary psychology, modularity of mind, and other modern cognitive science theories to explain why some modern version of the buddhist teachings (like meditations) work. It includes interesting interviews and solid book/article recommendations. It's very eye-opening to me and gave me a whole new perspective about happiness and meaning in life. https://www.coursera.org/learn/science-of-meditation https://www.coursera.org/learn/science-of-meditation

Rambunctious 11y ago
On the subject of happiness, Prof Raj Raghunathan's "A Life of Happiness and Fulfillment" is also something I would highly recommend. The learner stands to gain a lot of insights on the types of motivations serve to enhance as well as undermine happiness. Check out https://www.coursera.org/learn/happiness https://www.coursera.org/learn/happiness Have changed for the better because of it :)

digitalzombie 11y ago

Andrew Ng's ML Stanford Online Class. This was before Coursera, the first one and the one that got me hooked into ML and Data Science. After a few years working in the work force I decided to go back to get a master in Statistic to get into this field once and for all.

hrnnnnnn 11y ago

Fundamentals of Music Theory. The instructors were really active in the facebook group, and took time to make extra videos to answer common questions. The quizzes were good and fairly marked, the exam was tough, but the peer-review guidelines for it were very clear and easy to follow. https://www.coursera.org/course/musictheory https://www.coursera.org/course/musictheory

c1 11y ago

YouTube CrashCourse

kleer001 11y ago
Anatomy & Physiology U.S. Government and Politics Economics Intellectual Property Astronomy Philosophy World History Literature Biology and more! https://www.youtube.com/user/crashcourse/playlists https://www.youtube.com/user/crashcourse/playlists

andyjohnson0 11y ago

Earlier this year I did the Stanford Introduction to Mathematical Thinking course on Coursera [1]. I found it fairly challenging but managed to finish with a distinction. The instructor was particularly good. I'm now working through UCSD Interaction Design specialisation [2], which is a series of courses followed by a project. So far its been very good, although the short course format (3-4 weeks) means that there isn't time for much of a community to form among the participants. I've learned a lot though. I'd recommend both courses. [1] https://www.coursera.org/course/maththink https://www.coursera.org/course/maththink [2] https://www.coursera.org/specializations/interaction-design https://www.coursera.org/specializations/interaction-design

codexjourneys 11y ago
I also loved the Mathematical Thinking course, it was the first MOOC I completed and still one of my favorites!

mrsuprawsm 11y ago

Duolingo: https://www.duolingo.com/ https://www.duolingo.com/ It's not tech-related, but I have achieved near-fluency in one language in less than a year (Dutch), and I'm currently learning 3-4 others. (Russian, German, French, Italian) I find it very effective and easy to fit in around everyday life. I would definitely recommend it to anyone else seeking to learn languages.

rahimnathwani 11y ago
Are you living in the Netherlands and/or doing any study outside Duolingo?
- mrsuprawsm 11y ago
  I'm living there, but not doing any study outside of Duolingo. This seems to be sufficient to get by in daily life and social conversation.
- halviti 11y ago
  You'll have to eventually study outside duolingo if you are serious about learning a language. I would recommend starting with the duolingo course, completing it, then keeping your tree gold while exploring other learning material. Start with children's books and work your way up. There are also a lot of language exchange chat sites that are good to help you get more comfortable speaking a new language, but you will need a partner to practice with at some point. Also I've found ReadLang (which I found on HN) to be a very helpful tool for faster learning, and I upload the majority of my ebooks into it. I hope this helps.
  - rahimnathwani 11y ago
    Thanks. I was curious because I was using Duolingo to help with my (very rusty) Spanish. I could see that it was helping me to recall vocabulary (and some grammar points) but I didn't see how it would help me improve my listening. Reading your comment, I thought you had achieved near-fluency in Dutch with just Duolingo, and thought perhaps there was some functionality I had missed! Thanks for the pointer to ReadLang. The click-to-translate and immediate ability to add to a flashcard list are similar to the features I used most in Pleco (dictionary on steroids) when I first started seriously studying Chinese. I'll give Readlang a try.

Pamar 11y ago

I really enjoied Introduction to Operations Management (https://www.coursera.org/learn/wharton-operations https://www.coursera.org/learn/wharton-operations) which is not about CS/IT but more about organizing process workflow (i.e. how to make shops, plants or any kind of multi-operator job more efficient). I also liked a Coursera one titled "Data Analysis" but the url now returns a 404 (https://www.coursera.org/course/dataanalysis https://www.coursera.org/course/dataanalysis) and it probably morphed in something slightly different.

harveylord 11y ago

I found this course on European painting between 1400 to 1800 to be both well organised/presented and very beneficial in every area of life: https://www.edx.org/course/european-paintings-leonardo-rembrandt-uc3mx-ceh-1-enx https://www.edx.org/course/european-paintings-leonardo-rembr....

sidcool 11y ago

Great replies! Thanks guys!

wkoszek 11y ago
Feel free to consolidate the list and publish somewhere. This thread got lenghty.

mrgraeme 11y ago

Eric Lander's incredible 'Introduction to Biology - The Secret of Life' was my first step away from data analysis for online marketing clients (which I didn't love) to bioinformatics (which I do very much love) https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-biology-secret-life-mitx-7-00x-2 https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-biology-secret-life-... A Fantastic course from a legendary educator.

bewe42 11y ago
I'd like to second this. I had only slight interest in Biology but got completely hooked into the course because the teacher makes things so plausible and exciting. I wish one could do bioinformatics remotely, I'd seriously change careers ;)

citeguised 11y ago

The Javascript-Courses by Anthony Alicea on Udemy are by far the best I ever spent money on in terms of learning to code. https://www.udemy.com/user/anthonypalicea/ https://www.udemy.com/user/anthonypalicea/

maurits 11y ago

Convolutional Networks from Stanford [1]. No video, but comes with a wonderful set of ipython notebooks to illustrate and work with cnn's. Statistical Mechanics Algorithms and Computations [2]. Very well done video's shot in a studio with a green screen. Comes with massive amounts of small python programs to illustrate the material. [1]: http://cs231n.stanford.edu/ http://cs231n.stanford.edu/ [2]: https://www.coursera.org/course/smac https://www.coursera.org/course/smac

BillySquid 11y ago

Coursera Calculus 1 - https://www.coursera.org/learn/calculus1/home/welcome https://www.coursera.org/learn/calculus1/home/welcome , Jim Fowler makes Calculus a very entertaining topic.

estefan 11y ago

Can anyone recommend a course on business organisation? I'm planning on starting a startup and want to round out my business knowledge as to who I should hire. I want to stay in charge of tech & strategy while letting someone else manage finance, hr, etc. I couldn't find a single one that actually explains what a CEO does on coursera/edx/novoed.

akulbe 11y ago
I would highly recommend "The Personal MBA" by Josh Kaufman. He also lists several other good books in there. Even if you're not in charge of the entire business, you'll have a good idea of the "big picture" of how it runs.
tmbsundar 11y ago
Try Steve Blank's How to Build a Startup. Link: https://www.udacity.com/course/how-to-build-a-startup--ep245 https://www.udacity.com/course/how-to-build-a-startup--ep245
- estefan 11y ago
  This doesn't seem to cover business organisation either. I know there are plenty of these "how to start a startup" courses, but i'm looking to fill in a specific niche of knowledge, not have to sift through another general course. That said I've heard great things about "4 steps" but haven't got round to reading it yet so I guess it's worth a watch based on the instructor, so thanks anyway.

menticolcito 11y ago

https://courses.platzi.com/ https://courses.platzi.com/, there are like 70 courses in Spanish (frontend, backend, marketing, DBA, DevOps, android and apple development) but they also have 16 in English, most of them are talks with the best YC startups CEOs and founders.

manish_gill 11y ago

Can't edit my earlier comment, so making a new one: There are quite a few people on HN who are great at Economics and Finance. Could someone recommend some courses and texts (and hopefully a "path") for a complete beginner to understand it? I'd like to be able to better understand things like the FT and all the stats that CNBC shows me etc. Also hopefully get skilled enough to start investing in the market. Not to mention, broad economical trends and projections etc. Thanks!

tmbsundar 11y ago
What do you mean by FT? "Financial Technology" or "Futures Trading"?
- manish_gill 11y ago
  Financial Technology, but I guess Future Tradings would also be something I would want to learn? I'm at the beginner stage where I don't know what I need to know! But my long term goal is to combine my CS background with Finance and do something interesting in it, if that makes any sense.
- deleted 11y ago
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mynegation 11y ago
Have recommended that before: CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst) preparation materials. You can buy used ones for cheap as they lose their value extremely fast for people preparing for the exam, but small changes of accounting regulations should not concern you if you are reading just to educated yourself. They might seem overwhelming, but I am yet to find another set of books with such neatly organized and concentrated material on Economics and Finance.
- manish_gill 11y ago
  Thanks, will check them out.
11y ago

awjr 11y ago

I've found Deborah Kurata's course content good https://www.pluralsight.com/authors/deborah-kurata https://www.pluralsight.com/authors/deborah-kurata in particular https://www.pluralsight.com/courses/angularjs-line-of-business-applications https://www.pluralsight.com/courses/angularjs-line-of-busine... My only issue is her voice can be very monotonous and I find it hard to do more than an hour without having to walk away and wake myself up. Her course content is very good though.

tmbsundar 11y ago

Learning from Data by Caltech Professor Yaser Abu-Mostafa : https://work.caltech.edu/telecourse.html https://work.caltech.edu/telecourse.html. There was an edX version last year MMDS: Mining Massive Datasets by Stanford professors Jure Leskovec, Anand Rajaraman,Jeff Ullman, Link: https://www.coursera.org/course/mmds https://www.coursera.org/course/mmds Neural Networks for Machine Learning: Geoffrey Hinton, Link: https://www.coursera.org/course/neuralnets https://www.coursera.org/course/neuralnets Artificial Intelligence for Robotics: Programming a Robotic Car, Sebastian Thrun Link: https://www.udacity.com/course/artificial-intelligence-for-robotics--cs373 https://www.udacity.com/course/artificial-intelligence-for-r... Intro to Artificial Intelligence, Peter Norvig & Sebastian Thrun. This was the one which started it all in 2011, joined a little late by Andrew Ng's ML course which has been mentioned already. Intro to Artificial Intelligence link: https://www.udacity.com/course/intro-to-artificial-intelligence--cs271 https://www.udacity.com/course/intro-to-artificial-intellige...

alkalait 11y ago
I enjoyed MMDS, but the lectures given by Ulman were painful to sit through. The man could simply not deliver a single sentence not read verbatim from a screen.
- roye 11y ago
  same here, had to watch some of those lectures at 2x speed
Hortinstein 11y ago
I took Mr. Thrun's class on Programming a Robotic Car last year for part of my OMSCS classes at GA Tech. They should use classes like this in undergrad computer science to show why Linear Algebra will be so important and the amazing applications you can do with it. Highly recommended.

alador 11y ago

IMHO, the best course website is http://www.freecodecamp.com/ http://www.freecodecamp.com/ to learn Modern App Development.

nibs 11y ago

Learn to Program: The Fundamentals by U of T on Coursera https://www.coursera.org/course/programming1 https://www.coursera.org/course/programming1 Did not see any other mentions. It was excellent.

mark_l_watson 11y ago

I took Andrew Ng's machine learning class twice (scored >99% both times). That was my favorite. I have been working in the AI field since the 1980s, including a lot of neural network applications, but I still found his class to be an incredible source of practical knowledge. Other favorites were Martin Odersky's functional programming with Scala and Erik Meijer's Haskell class at eDX.

tmaly 11y ago

Can anyone recommend their favorite way to learn foreign languages? I am curious if there are any new online courses that have made improvements in this area.

fnsa 11y ago
I have done a lot of progress in German using Duolingo. Memrise helps with vocabulary too.
marai2 11y ago
Not new - but I had the most fun and most progress with learning French with https://www.duolingo.com/ https://www.duolingo.com/ My kids got into it as well and at one point we would all sit together and do one lesson a day.

wkoszek 11y ago

I liked CodeSchool: not everything there is great, but is very good overall, has a great structure and can teach you many technologies.

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