“I decided to go back to school because I was underemployed and mind-achingly bored. I decided to study computer science because I was tired of not knowing how the Internet worked. And I decided to go to Udacity because I was broke.

To get a glimpse of wonderland, I enrolled in Udacity’s CS101: Building a Search Engine, with tens of thousands of other students from across the globe. No scrambling for a seat in lecture, no add card to file with the registrar’s office—to sign up, I simply entered my email address. On the screen appeared Dave Evans, a computer scientist at the University of Virginia. Over the next seven weeks, his goal was teach newbies like me enough Python—a basic programming language—to build a mini Google. No coding experience was required, Evans assured his new students. ‘One of the great things about computing is that you don’t really need a lot of resources to build something that can change the world,’ he said.”

Head on over to the Pacific Standard to see how the author fared.