I'm not sure you could actual compile a list of totally free resources for other fields. For instance, I came across this list for physics: https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2016/8/13/so-you-want-to-l...

However, I'd say most of the items are serious textbooks with a hefty price tag if you're going to try to buy new. You can pick up older editions for pretty good discounts, though.

Eventually I think we'll get there from a purely non-profit philanthropic perspective a la Khan Academy model. The problem is, as Khan has gotten bigger, they have lost some of what made it unique in the first place (topic, knowledge and mastery base has shifted to k-12 common core/ap alignment).

Coursera recently shifted all their comprehensive classes from free to some sort of $$ model. The one free comprehensive algorithms class from Princeton doesn't have the second half posted for many months. All these for-profit companies that start out free are destined to move to a pay per course model.

i find it amazing that in 2017, a time when the internet has been fully realized and adopted by millions of people, there is no open source, universal textbook hosted anywhere. most people say that there is, and that its called wikipedia, but i dont think so. wikipedia is good for reference. its also good for learning if you are very intelligent and motivated. but for people who are not super intelligent or who have not learned to learn yet, there isnt really a single, centralized, high quality solution for learning things.

in my opinion, it would be very good for there to be a universal textbook that would not only contain all of mans information, but accompany that information with friendly and thorough explanations and guidance. it would foster understanding by being concise and structuring all its information is the simplest and most straightforward way possible. that is to say, it would be user-friendly. it might also include training programs designed to make anyone a good programmer, musician, physicist, etc. this would be a gigantic undertaking but wikipedia has done something similar so i think its possible.

The thing about conceptual knowledge like computer science is there are many nuances to it and the only way to get a reasonably complete picture is to read from various sources told in different ways by different authors.

What you are suggesting may seem like a good idea but humans will always try to be lazy when they can, and a universal free textbook make it almost too easy for them. In reality, everyone's gonna read from the same book without many people knowing the full extent of the subjects. I think this will only speed up the reduction in the number of expert. If you need any proof just look at Stack Overflow and the js community.

the nice thing about such a book (or series of books) is that the net number of experts could only rise, because this is an additional (and very powerful) source of information for people to use who are inclined to become experts. also, there would be a huge increase in the number of non-experts or amateurs. this is a good thing because even having a hazy idea of how things work is more beneficial to ones ability to live and carry out duties of citizenship than knowing nothing. just because there would be a lot of amateurs doesnt mean that there would be less experts from what i can tell.

This, as many other things, is a people problem.

The number of experts in CS is not constrained by availability of resources (though that might not be the case for every field), but the number of people that have: 1. a minimum of inteligence to get through it, and 2. The motivation and determination to strive at reaching expert level over a long period of time.

So, throwing more resources at this will only marginally increase with the production of experts. Maybe it will lower the bar of #1 a bit, but the bottleneck is really in #2 and the people that are not willing to work hard and keep working hard despite apparent failure will drop off anyways.

It is the same with open source community. By now, we should be literally swiming in free software. Instead, what happened is that society use of open source increased, but hackers willing to volunteer their time remained the same or even diminished over the years (every kid dreams with being an entrepraeneur and hit it rich these days, nobody wants to be a dirty hippy anymore). The slack has been picked up by paid employees from sponsor companies instead.

> i find it amazing that in 2017, a time when the internet has been fully realized and adopted by millions of people, there is no open source, universal textbook hosted anywhere. most people say that there is, and that its called wikipedia, but i dont think so. wikipedia is good for reference. its also good for learning if you are very intelligent and motivated. but for people who are not super intelligent or who have not learned to learn yet, there isnt really a single, centralized, high quality solution for learning things.

They're not up to snuff, but these do exist:

* https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page

* https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity:Main_Page

Plus, of course, https://www.khanacademy.org/

Why would you want one book? Can you even imagine trying to search through such a thing, or updating it? It's far better to have textbooks for each subject.

As for open source textbooks, here is one such initiative: https://openstax.org/

You mean something like this Physics textbook http://www.motionmountain.net/ ?

I'd love to see one for philosophy.

Yes, part of the point of studying philosophy is getting feedback from discussing ideas with others. But there's still a basic vocabulary and set of ideas everyone should learn simply so they realize their revolutionary ideas about reality and truth and beauty and so on have occurred to others, and have been discussed, probably for centuries if not millennia, and that the results of those discussions have been preserved.

It would be contentious, but some of the lists of core resources for CS are contentious, too.

I would recommend SEP (https://plato.stanford.edu/) for your exact purpose. Although not entirely structured as a guide on philosophy, it is very much akin to Wikipedia in that you can get lost for hours. I highly recommend stretching out on the patio with your laptop and a cigarette and make like Camus for an afternoon. As a philosophy major, it is an invaluable resource.

I'd say reading having a read of Bertrand Russell's 'A history of Western Philosophy' is a solid start. [0]

You can branch out from there, based on who appeals to you personally.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/History-Western-Philosophy-Bertrand-R...

I've been working my way through the podcast "A history of philosophy without any gaps". I find the episodes are a perfect length for my commute, and the presenter seems to be pretty well informed:

https://historyofphilosophy.net/

One of my personal project ideas (that I'll probably never get around to) is something along these lines.

I want to create a way for people to follow a particular idea throughout time. So imagine picking a topic, like free will, and you'll be able to use a map and timeline to trace writings on that topic throughout history. Each piece of writing would be linked to the sources it was inspired from, as well as the pieces of writing that it inspired.

while people are listing some good philosophy resources, it's not quite the same as CS course on the original link.

But it could totally be done for philosophy, there are some great lectures online covering enough that would be equivalent to a degree. It wouldn't be that hard to extend such a site to allow people to find small groups of people for philosophical discussions either.

>> As a cs-savvy person, I'd really love to see similar pages but for other fields.<< That is actually one of the the ideas behind Mindweb. Right now it has mostly boards and content about coding and cs, but it is open for all learning materials. So if you know your ways in other fields too: feel free to make a board on any other subject and share it with the world ;)

Physics: http://www.staff.science.uu.nl/~gadda001/goodtheorist/index....

This is free lecture notes online, but are best complemented with a textbook.

As someone mentioned below, maybe https://learn-anything.xyz is close to what you are looking for.