HN Academy

Well, it very much depends on ones goals and ones context, doesn't it? Which impacts what ones brain pays wants and what it focuses its attention on, and what it filters out no matter how much you attempt to cram it in.

What I found a revelation and a bug eye opener - yes as a (CS degree) programmer - was: medicine, chemistry (and org. chem and bio.chem), biology. From Coursera and edx.org. When I did this it was all completely free, now they put some restrictions on some courses (Coursera more so than edX), for example that as a non-payer you cannot do all the exercises.

Even when/if the linked courses are over, accessing there content should still be possible. The courses are free, a certificate is not necessary. Some homework or exams may not be available for non-payers.

Best (university level introductory) course for biology: https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-to-biology-the-secre...

Bio-chemistry: https://www.edx.org/course/principles-of-biochemistry

Physiology: I actually found a lot of lectures on Google better than any of the online courses, start from https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=physiology+

Fundamentals of neuro-science: https://www.mcb80x.org/ followed by "Medical Neuroscience" on Coursera: https://www.coursera.org/learn/medical-neuroscience -- easily one of the best courses out there

A very simple course combining (very simple, beginner level) programming and (basic) biology: https://www.edx.org/course/nature-in-code-biology-in-javascr... -- what's interesting here for a programmer definitely isn't the Javascript code, but asking biology questions that can be answered with (even simple) code.

Staticstics is a huge part of medicine and biology - plenty of good courses on probability, statistics (all levels) and courses using R or Python, here a random example course: https://www.edx.org/course/statistical-analysis-in-bioinform...

On so many more levels than I can briefly write down here this "field trip" into bio-sciences felt soooo much better than learning yet another programming language. Let's keep in mind, regardless of C++, Haskell, Javascript, and/or whatever framework, the hardware underneath all of it is all the exact same architecture. Looking at differences between the programming languages now seems to me like looking at a surface that to a naked eye looks completely smooth, but if you zoom in far enough with an electron microscope it looks like a messy mountain area. But when you do that you lose sight of the big(ger) picture. The excourse into (organic and bio-) chemistry and biology helped me get a better sense of where we are, at least it feels that way. The neuroscience helps remaining grounded (and getting more cynical) when reading popular headlines about "neural network" and "AI" and the like.