CMU CS Academy: a free online computer science curriculum by Carnegie Mellon
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Re: CMU CS Academy: a free online computer science curriculum by Carnegie Mellon
#2For only $10 more, they'll send you three pounds of fries served in a greasy paper bag, a Terrible Towel, and a Donnie Iris cassette single of "Ah! Leah!". It's the best deal in academia.
All jokes aside, if you'll allow me a tangential but relevant aside, a lot of people have heard of Carnegie Mellon, but very few have heard of Richard Caliguiri or David Lawrence. They were both mayors of Pittsburgh, and both led the city through urban renewal and revitalization plans that accurately foresaw the decline of the steel industry and consequently redirected resources to future-forward endeavors -- in this case, academia. Fast forward almost fifty years, both CMU and UPitt are world-class institutions, a plethora of industries (finance, robotics, healthcare) are thriving, and the city is widely seen as one of the most living cities in America.
Re: CMU CS Academy: a free online computer science curriculum by Carnegie Mellon
#3[deleted]
Re: CMU CS Academy: a free online computer science curriculum by Carnegie Mellon
#4How come this or things like https://teachyourselfcs.com/ dont exist for other fields like mechanical engineering?
Re: CMU CS Academy: a free online computer science curriculum by Carnegie Mellon
#5How come this or things like https://teachyourselfcs.com/ dont exist for other fields like mechanical engineering?
It'd be worthwhile for recreation, but software is kind of unique in eschewing credentials in favor of experience and ability. Civil engineers must be accredited to practice. While I don't think the requirements are as rigid for mechanical engineers, I expect a greater proportion of mechanical engineering jobs have a degree as a hard requirement than in software. This probably leads to less interest in things like teachyourselfmeche.com
Re: CMU CS Academy: a free online computer science curriculum by Carnegie Mellon
#6How come this or things like https://teachyourselfcs.com/ dont exist for other fields like mechanical engineering?
I'd imagine the labs are a part of it. There are very few places that offer proper engineering as an online program. I've not been through mechanical engineering but for electrical engineering even the first circuits course one goes through will include using scopes, power supplies, and other testing tools. Sure you 'could' use software to emulate this, but emulations aren't real-life.
Re: CMU CS Academy: a free online computer science curriculum by Carnegie Mellon
#7Is there a way to just sign up to test it out? Doesn’t seem like it at first look.
Re: CMU CS Academy: a free online computer science curriculum by Carnegie Mellon
#8This is a great project at CMU. Worked on it from the beginning as an undergrad.
It’s a very unique project: students have the ability to be involved in almost all of the roles of the project - from mentoring high school teachers to writing new course content and working on backend systems. There are 2 professors who oversee the project, and a handful of awesome full time staff to guide and manage the CMU students.
It’s crazy to see how it’s grown over the years. They just recently added an option to take CMUs 15-112 online with credit-by-exam at the end of the year: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/news/2023/cs-academy-credit-by-exam
Re: CMU CS Academy: a free online computer science curriculum by Carnegie Mellon
#9I wonder if soon all elite universities will make all of their curriculum and lectures free online, effectively turning them into content marketing to drive their customer acquisition funnel. The actual product will be a prestigious brand name, networking opportunities, and a laundered IQ test performed by the admissions committee anointing you with the stamp of approval at the gates.
In the public's mind one goes to an elite institution for access to elite education, but, with everything being free and ungated, there should be little meat left to support that argument. I realize it's not a fresh hot take, but until recent it was still plausible to justify the high prices with the excuse of learning. Don't think that will fly for much longer.
I wonder if they could get rid of the antiquated teaching portion of universities altogether and just keep the "gated access exclusive club for people of your social or cognitive tier" portion of it. It's somewhat of a YC model too. There's some pedagogy during the batch, even though nowadays so much of their great content is on YouTube, but the value is mostly in everything else you get.
Re: CMU CS Academy: a free online computer science curriculum by Carnegie Mellon
#10How come this or things like https://teachyourselfcs.com/ dont exist for other fields like mechanical engineering?
One factor may be that mechanical engineering remains dominated by expensive proprietary software, and the field is largely OK with that. Programming is unique in the sense that programmers can create their own tools, and have adopted an expectation that the most advanced tools should be free and easy to obtain. This culture could easily extend to making the training materials free too.
Another factor is that "coding" is the hot field right now.