There are some great courses available on the web, in the form of video lectures. MIT's OCW courses most notably, but many other CS departments have similar offerings. They might provide a bit more structure than self-study via texts, while giving you more flexibility than night classes.
Ask HN: What if I missed the good stuff in my undergraduate education?
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Re: Ask HN: What if I missed the good stuff in my undergraduate education?
#12does your employer offer any tuition benefits? maybe you could pick up a night class on their dime :)
Re: Ask HN: What if I missed the good stuff in my undergraduate education?
#13There are some great courses available on the web, in the form of video lectures. MIT's OCW courses most notably, but many other CS departments have similar offerings. They might provide a bit more structure than self-study via texts, while giving you more flexibility than night classes.
ArsDigita University has full lectures most core CS subjects. Shai Simonson's discrete math, algorithms, and theory of computation videos are great.
http://mgccl.com/2008/04/06/aduni-videos-now-on-google-video
Re: Ask HN: What if I missed the good stuff in my undergraduate education?
#14Books. Pick a topic you feel you missed, find a good (possibly "classic") book on it, and study in your free time. Work exercises. Build little test projects based on the material. There's lots of information on the web, but I still find to learn these sorts of topics deeply, you often need a good book.
If AI is your interest, one valuable resource I've found is searching the MIT Press online store for interesting-looking books (most of which are high-quality), and then searching Amazon for a decent used copy. Built up a nice AI library for dollars (or cents) per book.
Re: Ask HN: What if I missed the good stuff in my undergraduate education?
#15A few days ago I saw a link to a "roadmap" for Rails (http://techiferous.com/2010/07/roadmap-for-learning-rails/). It'd be nice if someone put together something like this for a rigorous and practical computer science skill-set.
Re: Ask HN: What if I missed the good stuff in my undergraduate education?
#16What you're asking is, basically, "How do I continue my CS education?" Consider getting a Master's in CS. If you do it full-time, it will take about two years. Since you know what you'd like to learn, you can check schools to see what kinds of graduate courses they offer. How much prior exposure you need to areas depends on the course itself - not just where you're taking it but who is teaching it.
This is not your only option, and many other commenters have presented alternatives.
Regarding student loans, my understanding is that once you're a full-time student again, payment is again deferred. This might even be true if you're a part time student - I recall a Master's student saying she didn't have to make loan payments even when she enrolled in a community college course, but check to make sure that's correct.
Re: Ask HN: What if I missed the good stuff in my undergraduate education?
#17Books. Pick a topic you feel you missed, find a good (possibly "classic") book on it, and study in your free time. Work exercises. Build little test projects based on the material. There's lots of information on the web, but I still find to learn these sorts of topics deeply, you often need a good book. If AI is your interest, one valuable resource I've found is searching the MIT Press online store for interesting-lo…
If the OP hasn't read Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs yet, that would be a great one. It takes you all the way from adding numbers together to writing a compiler for a virtual machine. There's a reason it's a classic. Also, it's online:
Re: Ask HN: What if I missed the good stuff in my undergraduate education?
#18Why do you want to lean compiler design (or any of the other topics you mention)? Are they directly related to your job/career path or just hypothetical areas of interest?
I have no college education and no formal CS training and I've done fine in the industry (12 year in it). I learned to program C at 13 from books and I learn what I need that is relevant from the internet and code samples. Stuff like compiler design which would purely be theoretical for me I don't let it bother me.
(I mean, at an abstract level I can work out how my code is converted into machine code/byte code but I couldn't write a paper on it).
Wouldn't it be worth spending the study time on learning the bleeding edge of development instead, like node.js or map-reduce if you are going to self-study?
Re: Ask HN: What if I missed the good stuff in my undergraduate education?
#19What you're asking is, basically, "How do I continue my CS education?" Consider getting a Master's in CS. If you do it full-time, it will take about two years. Since you know what you'd like to learn, you can check schools to see what kinds of graduate courses they offer. How much prior exposure you need to areas depends on the course itself - not just where you're taking it but who is teaching it. This is not your o…
Regarding student loans, my understanding is that once you're a full-time student again, payment is again deferred. This might even be true if you're a part time student
This is correct, at least for Federal student loans in the US (Stafford, Direct, Perkins). So long as you are attending at a half-time basis or more, your loan payments are deferred. Interest does accrue during these deferrals. However, if your undergrad loans were subsidized when they were originally taken out, the government pays the interest while you're back in school so your total indebtedness won't go up.
See the table toward the bottom of this page:
http://studentaid.ed.gov/students/publications/student_guide...
Re: Ask HN: What if I missed the good stuff in my undergraduate education?
#20does your employer offer any tuition benefits? maybe you could pick up a night class on their dime :)
This is always a great option, and actually I'm looking to go the other way. I studied a whole lot of computer science during undergrad and feel I missed out on other disciplines.
I'm taking a course in creative writing on my employer's dime this fall, and hoping to try out an intro course in a couple languages over the next few years too.