Computer science lends itself particularly well to online learning, for obvious reasons – after all, where better to learn about computing than on your computer? Self-motivated learners can choose from a wide range of great courses. Many CS professionals started off learning from personal programming projects, classes, and bootcamps.
That said, it’s important to pursue your online computer education in an order that makes sense, so that each new course builds on a foundation of skills you’ve already acquired. Start with learning to code, ideally in a relatively simple language like Python or else whatever language is most relevant to your career goals (you might want to do some online research). In-browser coding tools can make a growing number of programming languages easy to learn.
Once you start developing the mindset of a programmer, you can develop more advanced skills in your first programming language – or, even better, start adding additional languages to your toolkit! After you really get the hang of coding, you should take some time to think about your career goals and research the CS courses that are the most relevant to achieving them. Coding skills are fundamental to any CS career, but it’s these higher level specializations that will make you a true computer scientist.
