What are sources for learning bioinformatics for self-learning?
Learning a language such as python or perl is almost necessary.

You might have a look at coursera.

There are quite some bioinformatics-oriented courses:

https://www.coursera.org/courses?query=bioinformatics&amp;languages=en

University of California San Diego has a series of bioinformatics courses, with one that seems made for beginners in programming:

https://www.coursera.org/course/algobioprogramming

I haven't had a detailed look at this one, but I liked their more advanced courses.

In coursera, the courses are often organized in so-called "specializations" which give you a certificate, but are not free. However, you can normally enroll to individual courses without paying.

I would also advise learning how to use a UNIX-like command-line environment, and tools such as sed, awk, grep.

The following sites might be good for this:

http://www.grymoire.com/Unix/

http://software-carpentry.org/lessons/

The scope of the latter is broader, and the things they teach could be valuable if you want to do scientific programming in general.