Subject Guide: Computer Science

Association for Computing Machinery

freeCodeCamp

Teach Yourself Computer Science

Khan Academy

Open Source Society University

Association for Computing Machinery

SUMMARY

While the internet is full of self-guided learning in the subject of computer science, a field which welcomes amateurs and newcomers more readily than most advanced sciences, it is also important to connect with the professionals and the overall industry of the computing field. Here we find the leading professional organization in the field of computer science: the Association for Computing Machinery. They provide a professional infrastructure on an international scale, connecting educators, researchers, and employees in the industry via local chapters, publications, and conferences. Their Digital Library offers “the world’s most comprehensive database of full-text articles and bibliographic literature covering computing and information technology” (ACM, Inc., n.d., “About ACM Publications”). They publish multiple journals, as well as magazines, books, and conference proceedings. While some of these may require subscription or membership to ACM, some are available to all. Browse the website to learn more about the recent advancements in the field, join a local chapter, or discover something new about this vast and multi-faceted subject.

EVALUATION

ACM is primarily led by volunteers, though they do have a Board and Council to govern their decision-making. The association was founded in 1947, and currently they have a staff of 75 to coordinate membership and chapter activities. They are funded by paid memberships, including a more affordable student membership. Thus while some of their website and publications will remain off-limits for the casual self-guided learner, there are articles and various blog posts open to peruse in order to better understand what the ACM may offer to the future professional.

Like any professional organization, ACM may be biased by the opinions and biases of its governing members. However, they do publicly post their Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct, which outlines the fundamental ethical principles that they believe should guide their work. They also share profiles of their elected members and other governing members, the better to understand their credentials and any affiliations that may affect their work.

The website is a somewhat chaotic organization of posts and links to the various sections and functions of the site, including recent news and options to submit your work or attend upcoming conferences. A headline banner advertises their Digital Library, as well as their top journal, the Communications of the ACM. Their website’s most recent post is about the 2024 winners of the A.M. Turing Award, with a news release from March 5, 2025 -- this is the best indication of the most recent update to the website. The intended audience for the resource is primarily academic professionals in the computer science field, who may be publishing research and networking at conferences. But there are also lifelong learning opportunities and vast amounts of literature available to anyone who may be interested in computer science. For the self-guided learner or undergraduate student interested in a more “official” look at the computer science field, exploring the ACM website would be a great resource.

This website was found with a Google search for “computer science professional organizations,” where it was the second result after the IEEE Computer Society (another potentially helpful resource). However, unlike IEEE, the ACM appears more focused on educational networking, and thus may be better suited for an undergraduate audience.

ACM, Inc. (n.d.). About ACM Publications. ACM.org.https://www.acm.org/publications/about-publications. Retrieved 23 March 2025.

freeCodeCamp

SUMMARY

FreeCodeCamp is nearly exactly what it claims -- it is free, and it is all about learning to code. The “camp” is what you make of it, depending on whether coding challenges are your idea of fun, but it is an opportunity to find a like-minded community. The website offers a series of free courses, from various programming languages to coding interview preparation to English for developers who may not speak the language. Courses are broken into various exercises that users can complete within the website, and users do not need to sign in unless they’d like to save their progress. This may come in handy for the “professional certifications” the website offers. The site says you can learn to code with their free 3,000 hour curriculum.

EVALUATION

FreeCodeCamp is run by a 501(c)(3) charitable organization seeking to help people learn to code for free. It was founded by a teacher named Quincy Larson in 2014, though little is written about the founder on the website other than a link to his dormant Twitter account. His LinkedIn page describes how he began as a teacher who then learned to code and began to work on “technology education projects,” which led him to founding the site in 2014 (Larson). His own self-taught journey gave him the personal experience and motivation to start the project, but it is unclear if any formal educational training underlies the design of the curriculum.

While the site is run by charitable donations, including those solicited from users and visitors, it also has corporate sponsors such as Google and other software companies like Hostinger and MongoDB. This may give the site some incentive to emphasize topics and programming languages more pertinent to those companies, or to avoid subject matter that might criticize their practices (or those of the industry overall). However, other than connections to specific certifications such as those from Microsoft, the site does not appear to be selling or advocating for any specific company. The website appears up to date, with new podcast episodes as of 2 days ago and new videos on their accompanying YouTube channel as recently as 1 day ago. However, their courses are undated.

The intended audience of the site is self-guided learners who are new to programming and interested in entering the industry. It was found through another resource, Teach Yourself CS, where it was recommended as a better beginning resource to those who might be interested in learning programming before diving into the larger topic of computer science.

Larson, Q. (n.d.) About. LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/in/quincylarson/

Teach Yourself Computer Science

SUMMARY

Computer science attracts a large amount of self-taught learners, whether they are precocious students deeply interested in the topic or savvy adults looking to change careers. More than many other fields, software engineering makes room for people without formal degrees in this subject, and websites like Teach Yourself Computer Science can help anyone learn the foundations of computer science they would need to compete in the job market. By listing out the nine key subject areas and offering resources and guidance for each subject, the website walks you through a rough outline of a computer science curriculum. While the site may be too overwhelming for a complete novice to computing, it could be very helpful for a student or a self-taught engineer with a base of knowledge looking for some additional studying options.

EVALUATION

The guide was created by Oz Nova and Myles Byrne, who teach computer science to small groups in San Francisco and online. Suitable to the informal resource the website presents, the authors’ specific credentials are not listed. Therefore, the materials and how it’s presented may represent an unknown bias of the authors, though they write with a sense of authority about the topics and how best to study them. They list nine subjects: programming, computer architecture, algorithms and data structures, math for computer science, operating systems, computer networking, databases, languages and compilers, and distributed systems. Each topic writes out several paragraphs about their recommended textbooks and video courses, with guidance on what chapters to read and what exercises to do.

While the site was last updated on May 2020, the choices of textbooks and topics are foundational to the subject and not as likely to change over time. The biggest risk is that the links to the different open source resources may be broken or out of date. The authors themselves write about why it’s important to learn foundations over trendy topics, and why the older (and free or affordable) versions of textbooks are “perfectly adequate” (Byrne, 2020). However, it is difficult to corroborate the accuracy and usefulness of the website’s content without an equally thorough knowledge of the computer science field and the textbooks they are recommending. Before using the resources listed as class materials, students should verify with professors or librarians that they would be appropriate sources. But the guide is intended for self-taught software engineers and “a college student looking to supplement your formal education with some self-study” (Byrne, 2020). So with an understanding of its limitations, this could be an amazing guidebook for someone hoping to build a deeper knowledge of computer science.

This resource was found with a Google search for “learning computer science,” where it was the top non-sponsored result. It was also recommended on several Reddit posts about how to teach yourself computer science. While these are both informal methods for finding an educational resource, students of computer science often turn to each other on forums like Reddit to exchange suggestions and solve problems, and having multiple recommendations for a resource like this is a good sign of its quality.

Khan Academy

SUMMARY

Khan Academy may seem like a more juvenile resource for the undergraduate or self-guided adult, but with a topic as complex as computer science, it may be helpful to start with a more basic understanding of the fundamentals. Here is where a popular educational resource like Khan Academy may be useful. This resource includes multiple self-paced courses such as “Intro to Computer Science - Python” and “AP/College Computer Science Principles.” These courses are broken into distinct units, composed of videos, articles, and interactive games, created in partnership with college professors and other professionals. Courses can be perused without logging in, though an account would be required to save progress. The site is free and is also available as an app (though new AI-powered features do have a monthly cost).

EVALUATION

Khan Academy is powered by a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Aimed at students from kindergarten through early college, they cover a variety of topics and also offer tools for parents and teachers. They offer a full gallery of their team of content creators, software engineers, and fund managers. Sal Khan founded Khan Academy out of the YouTube channel he started in the mid-2000’s, to share math tutorials with his cousin. He graduated from MIT and holds multiple Master’s degrees in electrical engineering, computer science, mathematics, and business administration (Sal Khan, 2025). While clearly a well-educated man, he was working as a financial analyst before starting this journey into education. But it is clear from the vast amount of colleagues listed on the website that this is a team effort with many contributing professionals. Unfortunately courses are undated and it is unclear how recently the website was updated.

The site links to multiple studies which show the positive impact of Khan Academy on students (though, of course, they may not link to any negative studies on their own website; in fact, at least one study was done “in partnership with” Khan Academy so their independence may be questionable). Supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Khan Academy has a public profile in the world of education that outshines some of the other self-guided resources I’ve collected here. Its younger focus and lack of “professional” certification options does mean it has less impact on a resume, though, but it may still be a great starting place for building the foundations of computer science education.

Khan Academy comes up frequently when discussing online learning resources, in the same breath as Coursera, Udemy, and Codecademy. I decided to look into it when building this guide, and found that the computing curriculum was well-organized but limited enough to not be as overwhelming as some of the other options here. So it was found via a direct Google search for the Khan Academy website.

Sal Khan. (2025, March 11). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sal_Khan

Open Source Society University

SUMMARY

Do not be intimidated by the complicated-looking interface of this webpage -- it’s hosted on Github, a forum for posting and sharing code, and a resource you might get to know well if you pursue coding yourself. But for the purposes of learning more about computer science, this resource known as the Open Source Society University compiles a robust and free list of educational resources for the computer science-curious. Scroll down to the “ReadMe” section and you’ll find the summary of what the page is all about, the “path to a free self-taught education in Computer Science!” Each section of the “curriculum” links to courses or textbooks hosted for free or for minimal cost, and this webpage will guide you through a curriculum similar to a 2-year computer science program at a university. Complete with a Discord server to connect with other students and a Final Project to show off your hard-earned skills, this website could be a powerful resource to guide a student through the many topics of computer science.

EVALUATION

At the top of the page, the open source files of the project show that they’ve been updated as recently as 2 days ago. The page has over 150 contributors, but at the bottom lists Eric Douglas as the founder of OSSU. Though no information is given on the resource itself, a search for more information reveals he is from Brazil and has not been active for some time. Because the project has evolved to include many different contributors -- and, as indicated in the name, it is “open source” which means anyone can contribute to it -- it is difficult to evaluate the official credibility of the resource’s details. That said, the primary appeal of this resource is how it organizes and links to other resources, such as courses from MIT, edX (an online learning platform founded by Harvard and MIT), and Coursera. These more established resources offer stronger credibility, while OSSU’s annotations and notes about each course offer additional context for the self-guided learner.

Due to the informal, collaborative, and free nature of the resource, its biases may be harder to detect for the average user -- the intended audience being self-taught learners starting out in computer science, who may take the guide’s advice and laid-out curriculum as gospel. But for someone who is intent on exploring computer science in depth and desires a clearly laid-out calendar of which courses to take and in what order, this resource is easy to use and understand. There are so many free resources online in this subject that it can be overwhelming. With no corporate sponsors or official organizational backing, OSSU is not trying to sell you anything or do anything but offer an educational resource that is accessible to all.

This resource was discovered via a Google search for “learn computer science,” where I discovered Reddit posts such as “I want to learn computer science! Where do I start?” and “How can I learn computer science at home?”. Both posts included commenters who suggested OSSU. While I wouldn’t normally recommend following the advice of a random anonymous online comment, the computer science field is particularly vocal online and eager to help newcomers learn the skills outside a formal educational setting. As long as a resource is free and not asking you to commit any money or personal information to use, it may be worth checking out on their recommendation.

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Association for Computing Machinery

freeCodeCamp

Teach Yourself Computer Science

Khan Academy

Open Source Society University

Jaimie Huber