About The Missing Semester
The Missing Semester of Your CS Education is an MIT course that teaches the tools computer science students use every day. It covers the command line, editors, version control and other practical skills that are often left out of degree programs.
What it does
The course is a series of lectures with notes. Each lecture covers a practical area, such as the shell, the development environment, debugging, profiling and Git. The lectures also include modern AI-enabled tools where they fit the topic, since many engineering workflows now use them.
Key features
- Lectures on the command line
- Development environment and editor skills
- Debugging and profiling techniques
- Version control with Git
- Notes on agentic coding tools in lectures
Who it's for
Computer science students who want to work faster with their tools, self-taught developers who missed these topics, and programmers who want a refresher. It is most useful for people who spend many hours a day in a terminal.
Pricing and good to know
The course is free to follow on the website, and the lecture materials are published openly on GitHub. The lectures are short and practical, so you learn best by typing along on your own machine. Some topics depend on the operating system you use, so expect small differences in setup steps.
Highlights
- Lectures on the command line
- Development environment and editor skills
- Debugging and profiling techniques
- Version control with Git
- Notes on agentic coding tools in lectures
