Hi folks, ran across this just this morning and thought I'd share it. This is a course taught by several well known computer scientists which teaches how to use the python programming language. It has already started, but you can access all the previous course material and proceed at your own pace. They say that once the course is done, you'll know how to build your own search engine.

The best part? It's free and has no prerequisites (meaning you don't need to know programming to start taking the course). I realize most of you have no interest in programming. I myself have only dabbled and haven't done hard core coding since I was in college nearly 20 years ago.

However, knowing how to use Python could potentially be very useful for many IM people since it will help you to build some other basic programs and you may also simply want to have a better understanding of whatever it is your coder is telling you when you order a program made.

The course runs for seven weeks and is offered for free during Udacity's beta test. They supposedly will eventually start charging of the courses, but for the time being, you can take this one (or one on programming robotic cars, which I don't think is nearly as useful for our purposes) for free:

Udacity - Educating the 21st Century