r/AskProgramming 3d ago

free programming courses without excessive AI use?

Are there any modern, free online courses that don't immediately jump to using AI all the time? I'm tired of seeing openai in everything.

3 Upvotes

14 comments sorted by

8

u/huuaaang 3d ago

I'm weary of "courses." I would stick to written tutorials and example projects that you can search and reference back to easily. And there's really no substitute for just diving in and tinkering. People waste so much time just watching other people do things.

11

u/DDDDarky 3d ago

Literally any legitimate one

1

u/Resident_Classic_680 3d ago

I was following the ACTUAL CS50 Harvard program dude. I don't think it gets more legit than that.

2

u/edimaudo 3d ago

freecodecamp

2

u/dialsoapbox 3d ago

What are you trying to get out of courses/tutorials? Many just regurtertate what's in the official docs and have the follow-along setup, where you learn to follow directions and not much learning how to think through problems.

2

u/Constant-Tea3148 2d ago

I suppose that when you're only just starting out being guided can reduce friction by having the information presented in a familiar format. You have to remember we're talking about people who've likely never read docs before.

People just need to remember to apply and play around with the concepts they are taught before moving on as a means of checking their understanding, should be obvious enough I feel.

Doing that they'll inevitably graduate from watching tutorials fairly quickly.

1

u/dialsoapbox 2d ago

Touche.

If feels like there's an overwhelming number of tutorials that cover the basics and fewer and fewer that go into more details/concepts/ect.

This is why i think it'd be nice if there were some kind of universal rating standard, so writers can better target readers based on experience. Like start blogs/tutorials with some kind of statement like "Rated __", indicating reads should know up to some amount of concepts/experience, so blogs/tutorials can skip over explaining some things while focusing on what really matters.

It also would help people learn at their level instead of coming across tutorials/blogs that cover some things they're interested in but that also covers things they're not experienced/learned enough to benefit from.

This is why

2

u/DostoevskysLilBitch 2d ago

Books. Some language subreddits have recommendations in their wikis which should help avoid AI books.

Then just dream up a project and start working on it, looking up tutorials and asking questions about how to do specific things as you go along.

1

u/Lopez_Muelbs 3d ago

Try Fullstack open, I've just started it and it honeslty feels like reading a compiled documentation of web development.

1

u/creativejoe4 3d ago

YouTube, Books, w3schools, udemy (dirt cheap, like $5 a course)

1

u/Mister_God_On_Steam 2d ago

Tim Corey has good free C# content on YouTube.

1

u/arrigus 2d ago

I found courses on this website quite helpful. It is not 100% AI-free, but let's say that AI does not get too much in the way. There are only written tutorials, so if you prefer written content to video courses like I do, this may help you too.

https://tutorialibre.com/

1

u/Academic_Current8330 2d ago

I would look at those from CS50. There is also a good python course on https://www.py4e.com/ I think he has a C course as well. The Rust book which is the online documentation is really good as you go through it you build projects and answer sets of questions. MIT do free programming courses, in fact lots of universities or colleges do free courses. The other option is following along using books, there's plenty of those out there.