Looking for programming courses with independent projects to explore different fields

[u/Dazzling-Presence795]

Hi everyone!

I'm a CS student, or rather, I recently dropped out of university because I realized that I didn't really enjoy the amount of theory involved in the Italian university system. I'd prefer a more hands-on approach to learning programming.

Thanks to my previous education, I already have some experience with programming languages such as Go (Golang), Java, C, and SQL.

A while ago, I found freeCodeCamp and completed its Responsive Web Design certification. I learned HTML and some CSS, but I never finished the CSS section because, to be honest, freeCodeCamp's learning method started getting on my nerves a bit. I found it too guided and repetitive.

I'd rather learn the basics of a technology and then work on projects independently, with minimal guidance, instead of following step-by-step instructions.

I'm not particularly attached to any specific area of programming, so I'd like to explore as many fields as possible, including web development, app development, backend development, game development, machine learning, and anything else that might be interesting.

I'm mainly looking for free courses or learning resources, preferably with plenty of projects that I can work on independently. Certificates would be a nice bonus, but they're not a requirement.

What courses or resources would you recommend based on your own experience? I'd especially appreciate suggestions that helped you learn by actually building things and solving problems on your own.

Thanks in advance!

[u/xarop_pa_toss]

CS50x is probably the coolest one I know of this kind. They have great lectures, exercises and projects, and you get certificates at the end. The base one covers CS basics but there's ones specific to stuff like cybersecurity, SQL, and others

[u/Dazzling-Presence795 → u/xarop_pa_toss]

yes already checked those out a little while ago, i will give them another round, thx.

[u/Different_Text5151]

I feel you on freeCodeCamp, the hand-holding gets old real fast when you just want to build something. For that kind of independent work I always point people toward The Odin Project, it teaches you the basics then throws you into projects with almost zero guidance. You just get a list of requirements and have to figure out the implementation yourself, which is exactly how real development works

For exploring different fields maybe check out some of the university course websites that put everything online, like MIT OpenCourseWare or CS50 from Harvard. The assignments often have decent project components and you can skip the theory parts if you want. Another approach is just picking a small project idea and building it with whatever tech you're curious about, like make a simple game in Godot or a neural network from scratch in python. The documentation and stack overflow threads become your course material

Since you already know Go and C you could also look into systems programming projects, maybe write a simple http server or a small database engine. Way more fun than watching tutorial videos all day

[u/Dazzling-Presence795 → u/Different_Text5151]

thank you soo much, i for sure check out the odin project. for the project that you suggested, where can i find some documentation for starting something? o even videos if you have some suggestions

[u/HanzoShotFirst]

The Odin Project has project based learning.

The Build Your Own X repo on github has projects you can do in many languages

[u/Dazzling-Presence795 → u/HanzoShotFirst]

they give you some explanation on the language you choose or you are alone with everything with an objective?