Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs by Niklaus Wirth.
Ask HN: I'm looking for a good book on the fundamentals of CS
61–70 of 190 posts
Re: Ask HN: I'm looking for a good book on the fundamentals of CS
#62Learn Haskell. Most of Haskell concepts have root in CS and mathematics.
Re: Ask HN: I'm looking for a good book on the fundamentals of CS
#63I had a good relantionship with Segdewick's books, before being turned off by Cormen a few times. They are less math focused, and overall have a beginner friendliness to them. They won't take you by the hand an explain things like you are 5, but nevertheless they are more easy to digest. Also as a non-popular opinion in this current age, I recommend you to learn how to implement your algorithms in C, rather than an e…
CS50 from Harvard on https://edx.org used to teach Computer Science using C and still might do so.
Re: Ask HN: I'm looking for a good book on the fundamentals of CS
#64I highly recommend "An Introduction to General Systems Thinking, by Gerald Weinberg. An orthogonal piece of advice that I got from a different book of Gerald Weinbergs' is to learn 3 or 4 Very Different languages simultaneously, to grasp the enormous difference between them all. In 2021 I'd recommend C (lowest level other than assembler: 1st caveat, I haven't looked at Rust) and then at least one Lisp-family language that has Lots of Insane Silly Parentheses, which Paul Graham argues is the most powerful language (by far). I'd also choose Smalltalk and Python. Caveat 2: Every programmer will have an opinion on this list, but the main point is to get exposed to the diversity of languages. Also, I'd recommend listening to a lot of talks by Alan Kay. There is lots of fun and interesting stuff to learn from lots of different people, but Alan Kay has focussed on how do we develop stuff that is radically simple, radically powerful, and completely accessible to children as a tool for learning and exploration. His notion of 'object-oriented' (a term he invented) is completely different from how the term is used today.
Re: Ask HN: I'm looking for a good book on the fundamentals of CS
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, there's apparently one by Sedgewick himself. :-) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QZDe28peZk&list=PLwwk4BHih4... I can't vouch for it, as I haven't watched them.
Nice! Those video titles are a hot mess :( I'll have to go through them at some point over the break and figure out if they're high enough quality to recommend over the OCW videos.
They are also available on Coursera.
Re: Ask HN: I'm looking for a good book on the fundamentals of CS
#66I'm currently going through TAOCP [1]. So far, seems pretty good (although I found one mistake in an exercise). Also, I can never recommend Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective [1] enough. (Also features a rare mistakes in an exercise or two, but that's detail.) And for network protocols, Comer's Internetworking with TCP/IP [3] was just great (you only need volume 1). I've read Stevens' books on socket and IP…
If you mail Don Knuth about the error you found in TAOCP, he'll send you a check for $1 -- he used to do that, anyway. People tend not to cash the cheque, but keep it.
People often frame the cheque to put it on the wall.
Re: Ask HN: I'm looking for a good book on the fundamentals of CS
#67Computer Science Distilled: Learn the Art of Solving Computational Problems
Highly recommended for freshers, especially who had no academic background on computer science and willing to start their career as dev.
Re: Ask HN: I'm looking for a good book on the fundamentals of CS
#68I'm currently going through TAOCP [1]. So far, seems pretty good (although I found one mistake in an exercise). Also, I can never recommend Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective [1] enough. (Also features a rare mistakes in an exercise or two, but that's detail.) And for network protocols, Comer's Internetworking with TCP/IP [3] was just great (you only need volume 1). I've read Stevens' books on socket and IP…
If you mail Don Knuth about the error you found in TAOCP, he'll send you a check for $1 -- he used to do that, anyway. People tend not to cash the cheque, but keep it.
It's a hexadecimal dollar, actually, $2.56.
Re: Ask HN: I'm looking for a good book on the fundamentals of CS
#69Try harvard's free CS60
Re: Ask HN: I'm looking for a good book on the fundamentals of CS
#70I found The Imposters Handbook - Rob Conery to be a fantastic overview of CS concepts. Taught me where my CS fundamentals were deficient and gave me enough of the proper language to search effectively and start filling in those deficiencies.