Skills · 3 min read
The free courses that actually teach you to code (no bootcamp)
Harvard CS50, Python, Git, and prompt engineering — the whole free stack, in order.
Usman · updated September 2026keyword: LEARNYou don’t need a paid bootcamp. You need to finish one of these. Order matters — do them top to bottom.
- Harvard CS50 — the best computer science introduction that exists, free on YouTube and at cs50.harvard.edu. Do this even if you’re already at university. It fills the gaps your degree skips.
- CS50’s Introduction to Programming with Python — the follow-on, and the fastest way to get properly job-ready in Python.
- Git & GitHub — a crash course is enough. Nobody will hire you if you can’t clone, branch, commit and open a pull request. This is a two-hour skill that blocks people for years.
- Prompt engineering, from the source — Anthropic’s free learning guides (anthropic.com) and OpenAI Academy. Don’t learn this from a reseller course; the labs publish it themselves for free.
For structured next steps by role, use roadmap.sh — pick one track and follow it instead of collecting tutorials.
The rule: finish one course completely before starting another. A half-done CS50 teaches you nothing. A finished one changes what you can build. (Course names and platforms shift — confirm each is live the day you start.)