Anyone want to take a FREE corse in Cryptography from Stanford University? It started this week. Link below Www.coursera.org/course/crypto
I took this course a couple of years ago. I highly recommend it for anyone serious about learning cryptography. The programming part was optional extra credit when I took it, but if you are able to do those assignments, you will get much more out of it. We were allowed to use whatever language we wanted, but the examples and help provided were all for Python. There was no assigned textbook for the course, but if you need one, "Applied Cryptography" by Bruce Schneier is an excellent choice. The topics of the early part of the course seemed to parallel the early part of that book, and that book is widely regarded as the best introduction to cryptography anyway. Be warned there are math components in the course that some might find difficult. For example, in the 5th week of the course the professor took a break from cryptography in order to teach us some math theory by Euler and Fermat we would have to know in order to even understand what the hell he was talking about in the last week of the course. I sometimes found it daunting, since I don't have a strong math background and the notation sometimes confused me as well, but perseverance and excitement for the topic got me through it all. Also my friends with engineering degrees who took the course assured me I am just a math wuss, and it wasn't all that bad.
I forgot to add that Udacity offers a very similar course: https://www.udacity.com/course/cs387. I have not taken it, but a review I read from someone who has taken both it and the Coursera course said both were good, neither was more or less technically difficult, but some might find one or the other more preferable based on the course formats or teaching approaches. I looked it over but opted for the Coursera class. Have a peek and decide for yourself.
