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Brian Pfeil
Brian Pfeil

Posted on Originally published at brianpfeil.com

Study computer science, university-style: 15 free resources

Real university courses, lectures and full curricula, free.

I keep a directory of free ways to learn at brianpfeil.com/learn, sorted by goal, and every link opens without signing in. This is one of its paths: 15 resources, with the ones I'd start with marked ⭐.

  • OpenCourseWare, by MIT ⭐: Lecture notes, videos and exams from 2,500+ real MIT courses.
  • MITx, by MIT: MIT's online courses, free to audit.
  • Open Learning Library, by MIT: Self-paced MIT course material you can work through any time.
  • Open Learning Initiative, by Carnegie Mellon: Carnegie Mellon's research-backed courses that adapt as you learn.
  • Free courses, by Stanford Online: Stanford's free courses and recorded lectures, computer science included.
  • Coursera: University courses you can audit for free; you pay only for a certificate.
  • edX: Courses from Harvard, MIT and more, free to audit.
  • OSSU Computer Science ⭐: A complete computer science degree assembled from free courses.
  • Teach Yourself Computer Science: The nine subjects every software engineer should know, with one book and one lecture series for each.
  • CS video courses: A huge index of university computer science courses with free lecture videos.
  • Free online courses, by Open Culture: 1,700+ free courses from top universities, across every subject.
  • NeetCode: Coding-interview practice, with a clear video explanation for each problem.

Made here

  • eBPF: See inside the running Linux kernel — observability and tracing with eBPF and bpftrace, taught from an app-developer starting point.
  • macOS Kernel & System Extensions: Demystify how third parties extend macOS — from legacy kexts to modern user-space System Extensions — and build, install, and watch your own one run on Apple Silicon, all from the CLI.
  • Nix: Reproducible builds and dev environments with Nix — derivations, the store, and flakes.

The up-to-date list, and the other paths (code, cloud, AI, kids and more), is at brianpfeil.com/learn/university/.

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