josephmosby

I took the first MIT OCW course in electrical engineering and computer science (6.00) from Fall '08 to get my feet wet in computer science. I was not a CS major in college, but after reading through the syllabi of their courses and watching a few lectures, I think I have a feel for what they're going for.

Their intro course teaches computer science in Python, which is one of the simplest fully-featured languages to learn. It goes through programming structure and syntax without getting too much into the arcane. It piques the interest without scaring the new student off. If they decide not to continue, they now know the first bits of Python and can start learning more on their own.

If they do like it, however...the next level (6.01) is taught in Scheme, as best as I can determine. (MIT students correct me if I'm wrong) It rehashes a lot of the same programming concepts taught in the Python course but adds more on top.

I think colleges would benefit by asking if their students just want to program, or if they want to learn computer science.

But Intel is an ARM licensee through DEC. They've been making ARM processors through the DEC channel for years now.

Nashville and Austin. Perhaps Austin has been ahead of the curve a bit with SXSW, but Nashville is really starting to take off with healthcare tech.

Intel? I always think of them as the bread and butter of IT. Only 45 more years and they'll be a centennial company.

You mentioned you know HTML, CSS, JS and Python. Have you looked into Django? That's a great tie-in of those skills in a single web programming framework. Seeing how Django brings them all together might inspire you toward some app programming.