Courtesy of The City Project on Flickr. License CC BY-NC-SA.

As collected in our OCW Stories pages, people use MIT OpenCourseWare materials in many different ways and for many different reasons. Some are motivated by a general curiosity, while others are pursuing a specific goal, such as preparing for upcoming studies or a new work project.

We were pleased to learn this weekend of a somewhat novel work-related use. OCW helped actress Mackenzie Davis, star of the AMC TV series Halt and Catch Fire, prepare for her role as a punk software genius during the 1980s personal computer revolution.

In the NPR Morning Edition piece “‘Halt And Catch Fire’ Explores What It Was Like For Women In ’80s Tech,” Davis credits an MIT OpenCourseWare Python course with helping her get into the mindset of a college computer science student. (OCW is discussed specifically at around 1 min 20 sec.)

She doesn’t cite the course by name, but most likely it was 6.00SC Introduction to Computer Science and Engineering. That video-based course has long been one of OCW’s most popular courses, a cornerstone of our Introductory Programming collection that millions of people around the world have used to get started with computer programming.

Whether you aim to dive deeply into a topic and develop hands-on skills, or merely get to the point where you can play it on TV, OCW can help you reach your learning goals.