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Resources to get better at theoretical CS?

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Re: Resources to get better at theoretical CS?

#11

Post by rye-neat »

jventura wrote: post #9

An alternative to the books and links posted here could be to find someone who can help you with your "basic" CS doubts? Kind of a hire-a-CS-tutor, who could provide you with the necessary information, teach you something and eventually pointing the way forward.. As a CS professor myself I've been entertaining this idea for a part-time thing, but I don't know how many people could be interested on a service like this…

As a 33 year-old, self-employed/self-taught web developer looking to become a more proficient programmer this interests me. I've been debating finishing up college to obtain my CS degree but it's only to fill the holes in my knowledge base rather than benefit from holding a degree. An arrangement much like a personal trainer at a gym could be an excellent model: identify areas to work on, come up with a plan, and check in.

Re: Resources to get better at theoretical CS?

#12

Post by 0culus »

jventura wrote: post #9

An alternative to the books and links posted here could be to find someone who can help you with your "basic" CS doubts? Kind of a hire-a-CS-tutor, who could provide you with the necessary information, teach you something and eventually pointing the way forward.. As a CS professor myself I've been entertaining this idea for a part-time thing, but I don't know how many people could be interested on a service like this…

Yeah, that could be very good. Especially for people who are no longer students per se...sometimes having access to an expert is the best way to avoid going down the wrong autodidactic path :)

My professor is very helpful, but office hours and schedules can only mesh so much. I'm mainly looking for things I can supplement with to fill in any holes.

Re: Resources to get better at theoretical CS?

#13

Post by jventura »

rye-neat wrote: post #11
jventura wrote: post #9

An alternative to the books and links posted here could be to find someone who can help you with your "basic" CS doubts? Kind of a hire-a-CS-tutor, who could provide you with the necessary information, teach you something and eventually pointing the way forward.. As a CS professor myself I've been entertaining this idea for a part-time thing, but I don't know how many people could be interested on a service like this…

As a 33 year-old, self-employed/self-taught web developer looking to become a more proficient programmer this interests me. I've been debating finishing up college to obtain my CS degree but it's only to fill the holes in my knowledge base rather than benefit from holding a degree. An arrangement much like a personal trainer at a gym could be an excellent model: identify areas to work on, come up with a plan, and che…

Any suggestions on how an arrangement like that could work out for you, like weekly 1-hour online meetings for instance? Just trying to gather some generic opinions, aka "testing the market" :)

Re: Resources to get better at theoretical CS?

#14

Post by hackermailman »

There's some undergrad DFA recorded lectures/notes here from CMU https://functionalcs.github.io/curriculum/#orgc8f0258 specifically this https://scs.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Sessions/List.a...

Regular Expressions I learned from these course notes on matching/staging (assume you know basic set theory notation) http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~15150/previous-semesters/2012-spring/... and the accompanying chapters in Programming in Standard ML by Robert Harper http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rwh/isml/book.pdf where you debug regexp

Re: Resources to get better at theoretical CS?

#15

Post by rye-neat »

jventura wrote: post #13
rye-neat wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a 33 year-old, self-employed/self-taught web developer looking to become a more proficient programmer this interests me. I've been debating finishing up college to obtain my CS degree but it's only to fill the holes in my knowledge base rather than benefit from holding a degree. An arrangement much like a personal trainer at a gym could be an excellent model: identify areas to work on, come up with a plan, and che…

Any suggestions on how an arrangement like that could work out for you, like weekly 1-hour online meetings for instance? Just trying to gather some generic opinions, aka "testing the market" :)

- An initial assessment of my needs, formulation of goals and a strategy to reach them.

- a weekly correspondence would be nice but could be as simple as as an email/report

- a monthly meeting/call/video session partnered with the weekly email/report would probably be crucial to ensure the 'student' was being held accountable for producing results.

Re: Resources to get better at theoretical CS?

#16

Post by watashida »

jventura wrote: post #9

An alternative to the books and links posted here could be to find someone who can help you with your "basic" CS doubts? Kind of a hire-a-CS-tutor, who could provide you with the necessary information, teach you something and eventually pointing the way forward.. As a CS professor myself I've been entertaining this idea for a part-time thing, but I don't know how many people could be interested on a service like this…

Something like an open office hours where I could drop in (maybe like a Twitch live stream situation) and ask computer science topics to professors and experts would be really great for me.
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