[Mxyzptlk]

You don't need to know how to start at all, that's the point of the projects.  Sorting is everywhere, it doesn't have to be taught, it needs to be learned.  Read example code or the Wikipedia page.  Python is only good for scripting, it's useless for real software.  Debugging shouldn't have to be implicitly taught.  They don't teach the best practices, because the current college-CS-world is stuck on OOP and other bullshit.

If you actually are in MIT, then you're more qualified than me (I'm really young).  However, that doesn't mean that it's impossible for me to be correct.

On top of all this, you're the one who asked the question.  I simply gave an answer.  You can learn things from college, I'm saying that some of what you can learn can be taught better to yourself by you.

I am saying essentially the same thing as you. Stanford and Duke recommends C as starting language. MIT and some others recommend Python. I don't know which college is stuck on OOP, I not a fan of OOP myself. (Python is OOP but unlike Java you can write programs without using much concepts of OOP)

And btw, I have included two links for C language if that's ok with you, I am not asking you to take all the courses, take one with the language that you prefer and after you are comfortable, go to github and have fun.

I'm not speaking of any specific college, I'm saying that colleges often use Java and OO a lot.  I'll take a look at those, although I may be a bit past those.  I am interested in ML and mathematical logic though.

Those colleges that start with Java are stupid. I am also interested in ML as well as Cybersec. Let's see what my masters will be in ML or CyberSec.