ciencia-da-computacao: a grid of external courses where most books are not free

Nothing here teaches computer science, it curates other people's courses

The repository is a curriculum document, not courseware. Courses are selected primarily from open content produced by various Brazilian universities and institutes, and the organized list of disciplines is the entire deliverable. That choice shapes everything a student inherits. The material lives on someone else's platform, at that provider's pace, under that provider's prerequisites and rules, and this project controls only the selection, the ordering, and the admission criteria. There is no fallback copy of any course. Read every entry as a link to an external course rather than as a unit of study material, and plan on the possibility that a course in the middle of the sequence retires or changes its syllabus, because the grid would simply stop pointing at what it pointed at last week.

Free to watch is the filter, and it is not the same as free to finish

Four conditions decide whether a course enters the grid: it must be free or openly watchable, it must have a pedagogical method, it must carry community recognition of quality on the topic, and it must line up with what a computer science curriculum is expected to contain. The cost condition is where readers get surprised. The guide says every course can be completed for free, and in the same breath notes that some of those courses charge for diplomas, certificates, activities, or optional extras. It also states that every discipline has a recommended reading list and that most of those books are not free, while linking to Coursera financial aid as one mitigation. Budget for books and certificates rather than assuming the whole path costs nothing.

Extras is where quality material goes when the grid has no slot

The overflow has an address. Recommended courses of good quality that do not fit the grid are collected in extras/courses.md, and books that do not fit land in extras/books.md. That keeps the main sequence short, but it also means the extras list is where an interest goes when the curriculum has nowhere to put it. If your subject is a specialization, check the specializations/ directory as well. Changes to the grid itself go through the issue tracker and CONTRIBUTING.md.

Prerequisites are the only ordering rule you are actually given

Students may take disciplines individually or in a group, and may follow the established order or not, with one condition: curricular prerequisites must be respected. The statement that everything can be completed for free is about access to course material, not about a certificate you leave with. So the burden of sequencing is entirely on the reader. A topic taken out of order does not announce itself at the moment you skip it, and the cost appears much later as a hole in a subject whose earlier step was never done, which makes that prerequisite sentence the one line in this document worth reading twice.

Study habits are treated as prerequisites too, and can be skipped

Before the sequence, the guide has a section on study techniques, organization, and learning, recommending material on memory and study techniques, including a learning-to-learn course. It frames self-direction carefully: being self-taught is not about being alone and not about having no link to an institution, it is about taking responsibility for your own education, which requires knowing how to study, how much to study, and how to organize it. Those topics are marked as useful rather than essential, and a reader is invited to skip them at the start and return later. The framing is consistent with the rest of the plan: nothing is enforced, so the habits have to be self-imposed too.

Guidelines were consulted, and the text admits they were not fully implemented

The curriculum was built against external references, and it names them. The listed basis is the SBC's 2017 Referenciais de Formação for undergraduate computing courses and the UFRGS curricular guidelines for computing and informatics, together with the curricular grids of other Brazilian higher education institutions. The wording is explicit that these were taken into account without being implemented completely as suggested, and that suggestions for improvement are still accepted. Read that as a scope statement rather than a footnote. This is not an accredited program and does not claim equivalence with a degree, so anyone who needs formal credit has to check the relevant referential directly and translate this grid themselves.

Support is a Telegram server and an issue tracker, not a mentor

The named channels are a Telegram server for students, GitHub issues for problems with the course and for proposing curriculum changes, and social accounts for the project. The detail lives in files at the top level: HELP.md for the FAQ and the server, CONTRIBUTING.md for how to help, CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md, FAQ.md, and an .all-contributorsrc. Issues being the place where curriculum changes are proposed has a practical benefit, since you can read the arguments before making your own. The channels named are community ones, so they reduce the isolation of self-study rather than supply the guidance a structured program would.

Portuguese is the boundary, and there is no version to pin

Language is a hard filter. The stated aim is a complete computer science education using online material in Brazilian Portuguese, which is what makes the plan usable for readers in Brazil and largely unusable for an English-only learner. The header points at the sindresorhus/awesome list and at the ossu computer-science guide. On versioning, there are no releases at all, and the branch received its last push on 2026-05-20 under an MIT license whose copyright reads 2021 Universidade Brasileira Livre. Corrections and additions therefore land in the same Markdown file with no tag, so keep a copy of the grid you started from.

Editorial conclusion

This guide fits a self-directed student in Brazil who can read Portuguese, who can hold themselves to a sequence over years, and who would rather assemble courses from several institutions than follow one degree program. It does not fit a learner who needs the material itself in one place, who wants accredited credit, or who needs someone checking their work. Before enrolling, read the four admission criteria for courses and accept that they exclude material you might have wanted, confirm you can afford the books and any paid certificate or optional extra, and look at the extras and specializations folders to see whether your interest has a slot or not. The MIT license carries a 2021 copyright from Universidade Brasileira Livre, there are no releases to pin, and the last push on the branch was on 2026-05-20, so keep your own copy of the grid you start from.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. Issues
2. License: MIT
3. README
4. Universidade-Livre/ciencia-da-computacao on GitHub