Granted, I don't know if that's the best gateway drug to programming, but it has the irrefutable advantage of assignments that apply the information. You always feel morose watching OCW lectures where the lecturer talks about an assignment that you'd love to do.
Also another good "beginner" (was already a programmer, and it was still a great course) course that actually has everything - lectures, notes, textbook, assignments, tests and answers! - available free online is the UC Berkley CS61A course.
The course teaches the fundamentals of Computer Science with Scheme (Lisp) and the book is SICP (a really great all-around CS book). I watched all the lectures, and did most of the assignments over a month or two last year and learned a lot. Sometimes you have to Google around for old tests/answer keys, but resources for the entire course are online. I highly recommend it if you are remotely interested in programming.
Multiple Semesters of Audio/Video Lectures are on iTunesU
If you're like me, and sometimes prefer to have some visual with your audio, Berkley also provides webcasts of these lectures. Here, for example, is Spring '08 of CS61A:
If you're looking for intros to programming, 1.00 is also a fantastic course (it's what made me switch to a CS major) which uses Java. The materials are a bit older than for 6.00 though.
Comments
Great to see that MIT are addressing the most important problem with OCW: organizing the knowledge intelligibly.
I'm currently having fun with their introduction to programming that uses Python: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-comput.... (Get the lectures on iTunes U.)
Granted, I don't know if that's the best gateway drug to programming, but it has the irrefutable advantage of assignments that apply the information. You always feel morose watching OCW lectures where the lecturer talks about an assignment that you'd love to do.
Surprised that MIT TAs haven't setup online sites where you can do the assignments for a fee.
There's a business model for you!
Also another good "beginner" (was already a programmer, and it was still a great course) course that actually has everything - lectures, notes, textbook, assignments, tests and answers! - available free online is the UC Berkley CS61A course.
The course teaches the fundamentals of Computer Science with Scheme (Lisp) and the book is SICP (a really great all-around CS book). I watched all the lectures, and did most of the assignments over a month or two last year and learned a lot. Sometimes you have to Google around for old tests/answer keys, but resources for the entire course are online. I highly recommend it if you are remotely interested in programming.
Multiple Semesters of Audio/Video Lectures are on iTunesU
Resources from the Summer 2010 Course:http://www-inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs61a/su10/
Edit: Formatting
Great tip, thanks!
If you're like me, and sometimes prefer to have some visual with your audio, Berkley also provides webcasts of these lectures. Here, for example, is Spring '08 of CS61A:
http://webcast.berkeley.edu/course_details.php?seriesid=1906...
If you're working through the 6.00 class, you may be interested in joining the people on Curious Reef who are doing that class also: http://curiousreef.com/class/mit-opencourseware-600-introduc.... Over 250 people have joined that class so far.
(disclosure, Curious Reef is my website)
If you're looking for intros to programming, 1.00 is also a fantastic course (it's what made me switch to a CS major) which uses Java. The materials are a bit older than for 6.00 though.