Ask HN: How do I choose the right resource to learn CS fundamentals?

The bad news: you can't know what parts of what you don't know will be important. I can give you some recommendations, but so can everybody else, and they'll be different from each person. I'd look to high-level people in the field like Peter Norvig for recommendations, but that only narrows your options slightly. If you know what you want to do more specifically (i.e. security) try to find recommendations by an expert in that area (i.e. Bruce Schneier). But ultimately you're still hearing opinions, not facts.

The good news: It probably doesn't matter that much. Different programming books will give you different strengths and weaknesses, and that's a good thing because teams need diverse skillsets. It's been years since I wrote production code in a strongly typed, statically typed language, but I did that for so long that I still think in types, and I bring that structured way of thinking to the table in Python/Javascript, which means I avoid a lot of the mistakes those languages allow you to make. I've worked with people who were very comfortable with metaprogramming, which always feels messy to me because it inherently muddles types. It's not a tool I ever reach for, and I push back when people add metaprogramming to codebases, which is a good thing, because too much metaprogramming can be bad. But sometimes, judiciously used, it can be very effective, so people with metaprogramming skill will solve problems that would be very difficult for me to solve. If we had both read all the same fundamental programming books, we'd never have these diverse skills that make our teams effective.

TL;DR: Pick the first one from a reputable organization and do it. Time spent agonizing on this decision is time wasted.

Go to school or do some online or part time degree on Coursera/udacity. Otherwise you waste more time and don’t learn anything.

This advice is so much more important than which course or book you choose.

Don't sweat the choice too much, choose one of the canonical books, and commit to mastering the material by doing, not by (solely) reading.

For data structures and algorithms, work through Introduction to Algorithms by CLRS and follow the video series from IIT Bombay, available here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7DC83C6B3312DF1E.

...or use any other book or lecture series. Stop worrying about choosing the "right" resource; just find a resource and start learning.

I actually liked their psuedocode. It was always easy to translate to whatever language I was working with (the opposite can be said about TAoCP assembler).

Hence while it may be nice to see the Java code, I personally prefer pseudocode.