<story><title>Tell HN: UC Berkeley&apos;s CS61A/B/C are the best courses to learn CS and coding</title><text>I have dabbled with many resources before in hope of learning to program and learn basics of CS. I have looked at intro course sequences of schools like MIT, CMU, Stanford, etc. Most have partial resources locked down. I have dabbled with books and they felt like shit. Even the book Think Python by Allen Downey was all over the place.&lt;p&gt;The books and blogs at least taught me basic syntax constructs like variables, function definition, loops, etc. But I couldn&amp;#x27;t understand how to package them up (compose) to use them in solving problems.&lt;p&gt;Then I started studying through Berkeley&amp;#x27;s 3 course intro CS61A, CS61B, CS61C. They have all materials in the open and if you are following the most current iteration of the course, they even post solutions to the problems. It was godsend for me.&lt;p&gt;Now, I am confident to learn more CS topics using courses from CMU, MIT, Berkeley, Stanford, etc. The thing that was holding me back was the lack of confidence of programming and understanding really what a program was doing.</text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>mdorazio</author><text>Going to hard disagree here and say this is &lt;i&gt;extremely&lt;/i&gt; person-specific. I already knew how to code in C++ and Python from high school AP classes. CS61A was &lt;i&gt;awful&lt;/i&gt; for me and made me hate computer science. I tested out of 61B. 61C taught me how computers actually work and simultaneously made me quit the major.&lt;p&gt;Here&amp;#x27;s my take: if you are interested in &lt;i&gt;computer science&lt;/i&gt;, the combination of these classes is great. If you are interested in &lt;i&gt;being a software developer&lt;/i&gt; or &lt;i&gt;building things quickly to solve problems&lt;/i&gt; there are far better resources out there.</text></comment>
<story><title>Tell HN: UC Berkeley&apos;s CS61A/B/C are the best courses to learn CS and coding</title><text>I have dabbled with many resources before in hope of learning to program and learn basics of CS. I have looked at intro course sequences of schools like MIT, CMU, Stanford, etc. Most have partial resources locked down. I have dabbled with books and they felt like shit. Even the book Think Python by Allen Downey was all over the place.&lt;p&gt;The books and blogs at least taught me basic syntax constructs like variables, function definition, loops, etc. But I couldn&amp;#x27;t understand how to package them up (compose) to use them in solving problems.&lt;p&gt;Then I started studying through Berkeley&amp;#x27;s 3 course intro CS61A, CS61B, CS61C. They have all materials in the open and if you are following the most current iteration of the course, they even post solutions to the problems. It was godsend for me.&lt;p&gt;Now, I am confident to learn more CS topics using courses from CMU, MIT, Berkeley, Stanford, etc. The thing that was holding me back was the lack of confidence of programming and understanding really what a program was doing.</text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>throwaway71271</author><text>One person&amp;#x27;s best learning resource is another person&amp;#x27;s nightmare.&lt;p&gt;We still have not understood how to tach coding. The subject seems to be completely non linear, and some people get stuck and cant move on and the teachers cant figure out why and they cant figure out why, it could last 1 month or could last 5 years, and at some point some random thing they read or watched completely unlocks them.&lt;p&gt;(For me the thing that helped me was Richard Buckland&amp;#x27;s Higher Computing lectures: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=hE7l6Adoiiw&amp;amp;list=PL6B940F08B9773B9F&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=hE7l6Adoiiw&amp;amp;list=PL6B940F08B...&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;p&gt;The best way to learn is to keep trying and particularly trying to understand what you do not understand.&lt;p&gt;As Feynman said on his last board: What I can not create, I do not understand.&lt;p&gt;So if you are one of those people who is stuck, or you watch CS61A&amp;#x2F;B and it does not work for you, just keep looking and trying.</text></comment>