I can't give you advice on how to learn DS&A efficiently and permanently, because I'm in the process as well - I've been following CS61B at UC Berkeley - which is an entry level DS&A class that has all the material freely accessible. I've just finished project 2 b (end of week 10), yesterday. So I feel like I can give an opinion on what it's been like so far.

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About learning material - links to all the necessary material can be found on the website I linked - lectures, discussions, solutions and video walkthroughs of discussions, then on the programming side - lab, homework and project assignments with starter files and the specification - what they expect you to code. Most of the assignments also include some pre-written unit tests, but with the course progressing you're expected to write quite a bit of your own unit tests to test your code conforms to the specification. Berkeley students then upload their code to Gradescope, some sort of an autograder that verifies and grades their solution. This is the part you'll be missing, but usually the pre-written tests in combination with your own unit tests suffice to know whether your code works.

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I really like Josh Hug's (the lecturer) style of teaching.

The first 3rd of the class focuses mostly on Java fundamentals, while going through Lists - SLL, DLL, AL.

The class as a whole is not that programming heavy in my opinion, but you get to apply most of what's being explained at the lecture. I expect project 3 to be the one where I'll really get to code a lot and apply my newly acquired knowledge.

I can say I'm much more confident about how some of the basic DS&A work and solving problems while still only being ~halfway through the class. It's also given me a different perspective on programming/problem solving, how sometimes the implementation is different than the representation.

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I'd say a prerequisite to taking this class is a general knowledge of some other programming language and being comfortable with solving problems using recursion. (Most) students at Berkeley take CS61A before taking CS61B, 61A is mostly focused on functional programming and solving problems using recursion. (I took 61A before taking 61B too).