The average completion rate of online courses stands at around 15%. That’s because as a beginner, you want to see fast improvement in your skills and you don’t necessarily need to know everything on the face of the earth. And many of these courses are purposely made very long to make you think that you are getting more value for your money. But, they don’t provide much value for your time. Today, this article will tell you about over 5+ top online courses that have been found. Some of these courses are from renowned universities like Harvard and Princeton. These courses are going to help you learn different skills. So, you can not just pick one. Let’s do this.

Harvard's CS50: A World-Class Introduction

Imagine starting your programming journey with the same course that a Harvard student would take after paying 65,000 dollars for the first year's tuition. Sounds unreal, right? Well, you can actually do that without paying a single dollar right from the comfort of your home. This course is called CS50 and it’s available for free.

But what makes this course so special that over 5 million students have engaged with it within the first 6 months of its posting? For starters, the course is taught by Professor David Malan, who has also been called the "most popular professor at Harvard". And let me tell you, this guy knows his stuff. We have one more course by him in our list. So, stay tuned.

The course is designed in a way that even beginners can easily follow along. It starts with the basics of programming using C, but it's not just about coding. CS50 teaches you how to think like a programmer, to break down problems and solve them using logic and critical thinking.

And the best part about CS50 is the problem sets. These are weekly assignments that challenge you to put what you've learned into practice. They range from simple tasks like printing out "Hello, world!" to building your own search engine.

As an example, here is a simple "Hello, world!" program in C: ```c

include

int main(void) { printf("hello, world\n"); } ```

If you have any doubts about whether you will be able to learn programming using this course, go check out CS50 fairs where the students show off their final projects. From a virtual reality game to a machine learning algorithm, the projects are truly impressive.

100 Days of Code: Building Unbreakable Consistency

The hardest part of mastering programming isn't the complexity of the programming itself, but staying consistent with your practice. You start off strong, excited to finish every exercise you can get your hands on, but then life gets in the way. And weeks go by without touching your code editor. We've all been there.

To solve this problem, there is a course called “100 Days of Code” by Dr. Angela Yu. And it does exactly what it promises. It makes coding a part of your daily routine, even if it's just for one hour. That’s why this course is included on this list even when this course is paid and very long. Btw, this is the only paid course on our list.

But how does this course make sure you stay consistent? This course provides daily coding challenges and real-world projects that help you stay on track. Even though the main focus of this course is learning Python, it also introduces several other topics like Web Development and Data Science. As a beginner, it's important to explore different areas of programming to determine what you enjoy most. And you will get to do that with this course.

The course is available on Udemy and comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee, so you can always check it out and get your money back if you don’t like it.

Princeton's Algorithms: Ace Your Coding Interviews

Once you have learnt programming, most of you might want to get paid to write code. One of the ways to make good money is to get a job as a programmer at a tech company. In order to do that, you have to go through coding interviews. And the questions asked in these coding interviews are very different from the skills you have learnt so far.

Most of these questions are based on this one very famous course called Data Structures and Algorithms or DSA which is taught at most universities. Some people reading this article do not have a computer science degree. Many simply did not understand DSA well enough in college. For those people, there is this course called Algorithms by Princeton University.

This course is divided into two parts and taught using Java. Professor Sedgewick, who is one of the instructors of this course, has been teaching Algorithms since the 1980s. He has even invented a few algorithms himself. The instructors of this course have seen many algorithms come and go during their careers. Their book on Algorithms has been a bestseller since the 1980s.

This course covers a wide range of topics like sorting, searching, graph algorithms, dynamic programming, and more. Rather than focusing on specific algorithms in isolation, this course covers the fundamental concepts and techniques that make the basis of many important algorithms. This helps students to build a deep understanding of the subject that can be applied to a wide range of problems in the interviews. That’s what makes this course the best course on Data Structures and Algorithms.

Meta's Front-End Certificate: Your Path to Web Development

DSA requires a good understanding of Math which many of you might not have. Additionally, the DSA path gets you hired for generic positions and many people want to work in specialized jobs. One of the most popular specializations that has a very high demand is Web development. The biggest issue with learning web development is that this path is very long and most people lose track as they try to learn web development in an unstructured way.

To solve this problem, there is Meta’s Front-end developer professional certificate on Coursera. There is an option to audit the courses and get them for free if you don’t care about the certificate.

So why is this course recommended? Well, the course is taught by the Meta staff who work in the industry and have a good understanding of the skills the tech industry is looking for. Meta is also the creator of React which is the most popular and the most in-demand front-end development library. So, you’ll learn the best practices in React through this course.

This course is extremely comprehensive and covers everything you need to get an entry-level job as a front-end developer. It teaches the basics like HTML, CSS, and Javascript. It also covers Bootstrap which is a very popular CSS framework. We already discussed React which is a popular Javascript library. You will also learn the basics of UI and UX design with Figma. The course ends with a separate section on Coding Interview preparation which is a must to land a job.

Thinking Like a Senior Developer: An Introduction to Scalability

Everything that we have discussed so far can only get you to the level of junior developer. And there’s a big gap between a junior and a senior developer. That’s because a junior developer can simply write and push code for the bug that is assigned to them. But a senior developer has to make sure that the systems this code gets deployed to do not break down if this code is buggy. Additionally, they also need to ensure that the architecture of this system is designed in a way that it can handle a large number of user requests with low latency.

Once again, let's turn to Professor Malan to help us understand how it's done. Now this one is not a full course per se, it’s just an introductory lesson on how to think about scalability. But it’s a great starting point because System Design can be quite overwhelming for some people. This lesson covers basics like horizontal scaling, load balancing, and scaling. It also covers slightly advanced concepts like data partitioning and security. If you are curious about what exactly happens in the time between you type a URL and the website loads, you should definitely review this material.