>I have yet to meet anyone who has done self study who has studied theory of computation, mutual exclusion, and that sort of stuff, month on end, like CS studen

>I have yet to meet anyone who has done self study who has studied theory of computation, mutual exclusion, and that sort of stuff, month on end, like CS students do. Now you have :) Ullman's Automata course was my favorites: https://www.coursera.org/course/automata https://www.coursera.org/course/automata I find the MIT OCW superior to MOOCs for multi-course sequences, btw. If you want to do a full degree, use OCW. Coursera/edX auto graders are great for classes with programming assignments, but since there are so many classes from so many schools prereqs are a problem. If you're interested I wrote this comparison of the options late last year: http://logicmason.com/2013/self-directed-programming-and-computer-science-study-through-moocs/ http://logicmason.com/2013/self-directed-programming-and-com...