A Course on Automata Theory

Agreed; I took this the first time around and had a great time. Highly recommended! :)

For what it's worth, Sipser's _Introduction to the Theory of Computation_ helped me get through some of the gnarlier spots (and in turn, the lectures through some of the harder parts of the book). I picked up a used copy of the 2nd edition cheap off Amazon (it was sub-$20 iirc).

Do you have to use your full name to enroll, in the field asking for it? I've probably become excessively paranoid about giving personal info on the web - Stanford is probably OK...

Coursera is trying to branch out into academic partnerships and professional credentialing, which will probably want your legal name if they become relevant to your use of Coursera. I don't think they have a way to confirm your name for a simple course enrollment.

When I was an undergrad at Université de Montréal, the theory of computation class which dealt with automata was called "Informatique Théorique"; literally, "theoretical computer science". "Why do theoretical computer science," I'd ask, "let's do practical computer science instead!" However, thanks to the enthusiasm of my professor and his teaching assistant and the very interesting nature of the subject, it became the class that I enjoyed the most of my whole undergrad! And to this day, some of the lessons I learned remain important in my day to day work for some of the reasons mentioned by prof Ullman in the video: I now know that some problems can't be solved, some take too long to solve, and some problems require less powerful mechanisms to solve. And knowing this, I'm able to recognize when they are applicable or at least have an intuition that maybe they could be applicable and thus I have a clearer idea of how to solve certain problems.

I highly encourage you to learn about this stuff, it's a lot of fun and is actually practical!