My Computer Science degree is from 1988. There is really not much new. If you can read & write c and Pascal you are way ahead of the current crowd. The trend has drifted to bloated code and disregard for machine performance. A library or API call is preferred to self contained code. Getting a "tool chain" in place the first time is more difficult than actually writing code. A lot of what is called programming is actually scripting. Since Windows does not support legacy drivers each new release makes any special IO devices unuseable in about 4 years. Recently I have noted: The latest C++ specs were mostly ignored. Apparently those who actually write code are not interested in new ways to do the same old things. I got tired of Python and put it away for a while when I got to the matter of string handling. To me, the old way was concise and complete. The real attraction is that the package (Pyton.org) is free, can be run as an interpreter or compiled and is extensively cross platform. I have not got to JAVA yet but its popularity and flexibility makes it a must do. As soon as any programming package becomes popular there seems to be a movement to fragment away from any standards. Kind of a "Tower of Babel" event. C/C++ is available as open source and free. It works well and would probably be a good starting point for you. The whole Open Source movement is worth joining. Most software seems to become available well ahead of any written documents. Nearly anything you want to learn has a good YouTube Tutorial as well as free online tutorials. No individual can do everything, there is just too much. That has not changed.