Ask HN: Self-Study or Take a Class in Programming?

I'm a college student pursuing liberal arts studies (econ/political science). I know the basics of CSS and HTML but I want to eventually be able to work on web applications. I've read a lot here about various different learning methods with past Ask HN posts and I'm curious if any of you have opinions on what's better for a new programmer, the classroom environment or self-studying.

The introductory courses at my university are taught with Java. As my academic aims lie outside of CS (and may change depending on my future programming experience), I thought it might be advantageous to learn programming extracurricularly through OpenCourseWare. Have any of you had experience with both? What did you find to be better? If you had the opportunity to take a classroom course, would you?

Thanks to all of you.