The quantity and quality of programming courses available online right now - completely free of charge - is astounding to me. I taught myself to program in high

The quantity and quality of programming courses available online right now - completely free of charge - is astounding to me. I taught myself to program in high school in the mid-to-late 90's, and while there was a ton of information available online even then, I still kind of wish stuff like Udacity, Coursera, Khan Academy, iTunes University and MIT OCW were available back then. Still, I think the social aspects of college are hard to fully replicate online. For many people, interactions on places like Reddit, mailing lists, etc are somewhat too anonymous and random, while things like Skype and FaceTime are more for people who are already familiar with each other. I do think the Internet has huge potential to fundamentally change the way we obtain education. It certainly has fundamentally changed the way we obtain information, but it hasn't changed the way we get marketplace-accepted education yet. I think that is coming.