Open Source Society University
Path to a free self-taught education in Computer Science!
The OSSU curriculum is a complete education in computer science using online materials.
It’s not merely for career training or professional development.
It’s for those who want a proper, well-rounded grounding in concepts fundamental to all computing disciplines,
and for those who have the discipline, will, and (most importantly!) good habits to obtain this education largely on their own,
but with support from a worldwide community of fellow learners.
It is designed according to the degree requirements of undergraduate computer science majors, minus general education (non-CS) requirements,
as it is assumed most of the people following this curriculum are already educated outside the field of CS.
The courses themselves are among the very best in the world, often coming from Harvard, Princeton, MIT, etc.,
but specifically chosen to meet the following criteria.
Courses must:
- Be open for enrollment
- Run regularly (ideally in self-paced format, otherwise running multiple times per year)
- Be of generally high quality in teaching materials and pedagogical principles
- Match the curricular standards of the CS 2013: Curriculum Guidelines for Undergraduate Degree Programs in Computer Science
When no course meets the above criteria, the coursework is supplemented with a book.
When there are courses or books that don’t fit into the curriculum but are otherwise of high quality,
they belong in extras/courses or extras/readings.
Organization. The curriculum is designed as follows:
- Intro CS: for students to try out CS and see if it’s right for them
- Core CS: corresponds roughly to the first three years of a computer science curriculum, taking classes that all majors would be required to take
- Advanced CS: corresponds roughly to the final year of a computer science curriculum, taking electives according to the student’s interests
- Final Project: a project for students to validate, consolidate, and display their knowledge, to be evaluated by their peers worldwide
Duration. It is possible to finish within about 2 years if you plan carefully and devote roughly 20 hours/week to your studies. Learners can use this spreadsheet
to estimate their end date. Make a copy and input your start date and expected hours per week in the Timeline sheet. As you work through courses you can enter your actual course completion dates in the Curriculum Data sheet and get updated completion estimates.
Cost. All or nearly all course material is available for free. However, some courses may charge money for assignments/tests/projects to be graded.
Note that both Coursera and edX offer financial aid.
Decide how much or how little to spend based on your own time and budget;
just remember that you can’t purchase success!
Process. Students can work through the curriculum alone or in groups, in order or out of order.
- We recommend doing all courses in Core CS, only skipping a course when you are certain that you’ve already learned the material previously.
- For simplicity, we recommend working through courses (especially Core CS) in order from top to bottom, as they have already been topologically sorted by their prerequisites.
- Courses in Advanced CS are electives. Choose one subject (e.g. Advanced programming) you want to become an expert in and take all the courses under that heading. You can also create your own custom subject, but we recommend getting validation from the community on the subject you choose.
Content policy. If you plan on showing off some of your coursework publicly, you must share only files that you are allowed to.
Do NOT disrespect the code of conduct that you signed in the beginning of each course!
Getting help (Details about our FAQ and chatroom)
- We have a discord server!
This should be your first stop to talk with other OSSU students. Why don’t you introduce yourself right now? Join the OSSU Discord
- You can also interact through GitHub issues. If there is a problem with a course, or a change needs to be made to the curriculum, this is the place to start the conversation. Read more here.
- Subscribe to our newsletter.
- Add Open Source Society University to your Linkedin profile!
- Note: There is an unmaintained and deprecated firebase app that you might find when searching OSSU. You can safely ignore it. Read more in the FAQ.
Curriculum version: 8.0.0 (see CHANGELOG)
Prerequisites
- Core CS assumes the student has already taken high school math, including algebra, geometry, and pre-calculus.
- Advanced CS assumes the student has already taken the entirety of Core CS
and is knowledgeable enough now to decide which electives to take. - Note that Advanced systems assumes the student has taken a basic physics course (e.g. AP Physics in high school).
Intro CS
Introduction to Programming
If you’ve never written a for-loop, or don’t know what a string is in programming, start here. This course is self-paced, allowing you to adjust the number of hours you spend per week to meet your needs.
Topics covered:
simple programs
simple data structures
Introduction to Computer Science
This course will introduce you to the world of computer science. Students who have been introduced to programming, either from the courses above or through study elsewhere, should take this course for a flavor of the material to come. If you finish the course wanting more, Computer Science is likely for you!
Topics covered:
computation
imperative programming
basic data structures and algorithms
and more
Core CS
All coursework under Core CS is required, unless otherwise indicated.
Core programming
Topics covered:
functional programming
design for testing
program requirements
common design patterns
unit testing
object-oriented design
static typing
dynamic typing
ML-family languages (via Standard ML)
Lisp-family languages (via Racket)
Ruby
and more
Core math
Discrete math (Math for CS) is a prerequisite and closely related to the study of algorithms and data structures. Calculus both prepares students for discrete math and helps students develop mathematical maturity.
Topics covered:
discrete mathematics
mathematical proofs
basic statistics
O-notation
discrete probability
and more
CS Tools
Understanding theory is important, but you will also be expected to create programs. There are a number of tools that are widely used to make that process easier. Learn them now to ease your future work writing programs.
Topics covered:
terminals and shell scripting
vim
command line environments
version control
and more
Core systems
Topics covered:
procedural programming
manual memory management
boolean algebra
gate logic
memory
computer architecture
assembly
machine language
virtual machines
high-level languages
compilers
operating systems
network protocols
and more
Core theory
Topics covered:
divide and conquer
sorting and searching
randomized algorithms
graph search
shortest paths
data structures
greedy algorithms
minimum spanning trees
dynamic programming
NP-completeness
and more
| Courses | Duration | Effort | Prerequisites | Discussion |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Divide and Conquer, Sorting and Searching, and Randomized Algorithms | 4 weeks | 4-8 hours/week | any programming language, Mathematics for Computer Science | chat |
| Graph Search, Shortest Paths, and Data Structures | 4 weeks | 4-8 hours/week | Divide and Conquer, Sorting and Searching, and Randomized Algorithms | chat |
| Greedy Algorithms, Minimum Spanning Trees, and Dynamic Programming | 4 weeks | 4-8 hours/week | Graph Search, Shortest Paths, and Data Structures | chat |
| Shortest Paths Revisited, NP-Complete Problems and What To Do About Them | 4 weeks | 4-8 hours/week | Greedy Algorithms, Minimum Spanning Trees, and Dynamic Programming | chat |
Core security
Topics covered
Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability
Secure Design
Defensive Programming
Threats and Attacks
Network Security
Cryptography
and more
Choose one of the following:
Core applications
Topics covered:
Agile methodology
REST
software specifications
refactoring
relational databases
transaction processing
data modeling
neural networks
supervised learning
unsupervised learning
OpenGL
ray tracing
and more
Core ethics
Topics covered:
Social Context
Analytical Tools
Professional Ethics
Intellectual Property
Privacy and Civil Liberties
and more
Advanced CS
After completing every required course in Core CS, students should choose a subset of courses from Advanced CS based on interest.
Not every course from a subcategory needs to be taken.
But students should take every course that is relevant to the field they intend to go into.
Advanced programming
Topics covered:
debugging theory and practice
goal-oriented programming
parallel computing
object-oriented analysis and design
UML
large-scale software architecture and design
and more
(*) book by Blackburn, Bos, Striegnitz (compiled from source, redistributed under CC license)
Advanced systems
Topics covered:
digital signaling
combinational logic
CMOS technologies
sequential logic
finite state machines
processor instruction sets
caches
pipelining
virtualization
parallel processing
virtual memory
synchronization primitives
system call interface
and more
Advanced theory
Topics covered:
formal languages
Turing machines
computability
event-driven concurrency
automata
distributed shared memory
consensus algorithms
state machine replication
computational geometry theory
propositional logic
relational logic
Herbrand logic
game trees
and more
Advanced Information Security
Advanced math
Final project
OSS University is project-focused.
The assignments and exams for each course are to prepare you to use your knowledge to solve real-world problems.
After you’ve gotten through all of Core CS and the parts of Advanced CS relevant to you, you should think about a problem that you can solve using the knowledge you’ve acquired.
Not only does real project work look great on a resume, but the project will also validate and consolidate your knowledge.
You can create something entirely new, or you can find an existing project that needs help via websites like
CodeTriage
or
First Timers Only.
Students who would like more guidance in creating a project may choose to use a series of project oriented courses. Here is a sample of options (many more are available, at this point
