HN Academy

> IMHO these courses only scratch the surface

Of course - that is what I recommend to programmers and CS majors, working in those jobs, on the side, not as a career path.

But in any case, those are "real" courses, so "scratching the surface" not because they are dumbed down but because those are the freshman courses. Of course year 2+ students will get more advanced courses not usually found on edX (although they have quite advanced topics in physics, for example https://www.edx.org/course/mastering-quantum-mechanics-part-...).

As I said, an alternative to learning yet another only mildly different programming language (that runs on the exact same pieces of silicon as the other ones they already know, so it cannot be fundamentally different by definition).

MIT's 8.05x, Mastering Quantum Mechanics (https://www.edx.org/course/mastering-quantum-mechanics-mitx-...)

It's the only MOOC I've taken that was anywhere close to the kind of experience I had as an actual undergraduate at MIT. Outstanding lectures with accompanying lecture notes, challenging but rewarding problem sets, lots of interaction by the professor and other staff in the forums.

It's not a course in the sense of having problem sets and grades, but V. Balakrishnan's lecture series on classical physics (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5E4E56893588CBA8) is amazing, just incredibly dense with insight.