Teach Yourself Computer Science • Hacker News Board

Re: Teach Yourself Computer Science

#21

Post by 628C6l0 » Sat, Jul 21, 2018, 5:10 PM UTC

scarecrowbob wrote: post #12

yters wrote: post #6

I have many degrees in computer science, and have used almost none of the knowledge in programming jobs. So, the content is fairly useless, practically speaking. I've also found the more I focus on theoretical elements while at work, the more useless I become. The actually useful elements are big picture, and can probably be taught in one or two classes. Much more useful than technical knowledge are the abilities to…

I have very little training in formal CS (like, I dropped out of a CS program as a sophomore to get a BA in Philosophy and an MA in Lit). I learned almost all the basis for what I do on a day-to-day practice of being a programmer from: - my high school programming classes - my grad school practice of learning how to research and read - a bunch of middle school classes in formal logic - playing with a ton of programmi…

Agree with the last sentence. All the different data structures for example. Where do they come from? Presumably because in doing some practical tasks we realize it would be a lot more efficient if we organize data that way. To acquire proficiency with those concepts by seeing a genuine need for them in the task at hand imo follows a much more logical order of introduction.

Re: Teach Yourself Computer Science

#22

Post by bogardon » Sat, Jul 21, 2018, 5:42 PM UTC

My personal experience is that I got bored with frontend and pushing pixels, and when I tried to switch into infra work I found my incomplete picture of CS made it hard for me to grasp concepts other seem to take for granted. Maybe you don't have to have a CS degree, but even having a survey knowledge of major CS topics will at least give you more confidence.

Re: Teach Yourself Computer Science

#23

Post by agumonkey » Sat, Jul 21, 2018, 5:54 PM UTC

hobls wrote: post #13

skylark wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really depends on what kind of development you're doing. The majority of software engineers are application developers making CRUD websites or mobile apps, so that perspective is the one to come up most often. I also happen to be one of those developers. The challenges of application development are related to transforming data, handling asynchronous operations, managing state, and picking elegant abstractions tha…

Even most of video game development is simply using features of the existing engine. Some basic 3D math is required, but nothing crazy. You do find some gnarly problems in engine development though. (And some of the sub-disciplines like the network and graphics programmers.)

So CS should get a job at tooling companies because that's where deep things are done ?

Re: Teach Yourself Computer Science

#24

Post by Waterluvian » Sat, Jul 21, 2018, 6:00 PM UTC

There aren't two types of software engineers. It's a spectrum, possibly multidimensional. The attraction to declaring two types of any kind of person is that you can bin all the desirable and undesirable traits together.

Re: Teach Yourself Computer Science

#25

Post by Waterluvian » Sat, Jul 21, 2018, 6:01 PM UTC

bogardon wrote: post #22

My personal experience is that I got bored with frontend and pushing pixels, and when I tried to switch into infra work I found my incomplete picture of CS made it hard for me to grasp concepts other seem to take for granted. Maybe you don't have to have a CS degree, but even having a survey knowledge of major CS topics will at least give you more confidence.

I'd love to know what kinds of concepts you struggled with.

I do maybe 30% front end, then a whole bunch of everything else and often wonder what entire categories I'm blind of.

Re: Teach Yourself Computer Science

#26

Post by Waterluvian » Sat, Jul 21, 2018, 6:03 PM UTC

yters wrote: post #6

I have many degrees in computer science, and have used almost none of the knowledge in programming jobs. So, the content is fairly useless, practically speaking. I've also found the more I focus on theoretical elements while at work, the more useless I become. The actually useful elements are big picture, and can probably be taught in one or two classes. Much more useful than technical knowledge are the abilities to…

"I know sorting algorithms so intimately that I know to always reach for the built in .sort()" - hypothetical person in my head.

Re: Teach Yourself Computer Science

#27

Post by bogardon » Sat, Jul 21, 2018, 6:14 PM UTC

Waterluvian wrote: post #25

bogardon wrote: post #22

My personal experience is that I got bored with frontend and pushing pixels, and when I tried to switch into infra work I found my incomplete picture of CS made it hard for me to grasp concepts other seem to take for granted. Maybe you don't have to have a CS degree, but even having a survey knowledge of major CS topics will at least give you more confidence.

I'd love to know what kinds of concepts you struggled with. I do maybe 30% front end, then a whole bunch of everything else and often wonder what entire categories I'm blind of.

Just like OS concepts like sockets/files/pipes and how clang/ld/dyld actually works.

Re: Teach Yourself Computer Science

#28

Post by karimdag » Sat, Jul 21, 2018, 6:33 PM UTC

gruglife wrote: post #3

_t94r wrote: post #2

How does it compare to OSSU ( https://github.com/ossu/computer-science/blob/dev/README.md ) ?

At the bottom of the website, the authors compare the two and freeCodeCamp. How does this compare to Open Source Society or freeCodeCamp curricula? The OSS guide has too many subjects, suggests inferior resources for many of them, and provides no rationale or guidance around why or what aspects of particular courses are valuable. We strove to limit our list of courses to those which you really should know as a softwa…

I was on mobile so didn't get to scroll to the bottom of it. Thanks!

Re: Teach Yourself Computer Science

#29

Post by pkaler » Sat, Jul 21, 2018, 6:33 PM UTC

yters wrote: post #6

I have many degrees in computer science, and have used almost none of the knowledge in programming jobs. So, the content is fairly useless, practically speaking. I've also found the more I focus on theoretical elements while at work, the more useless I become. The actually useful elements are big picture, and can probably be taught in one or two classes. Much more useful than technical knowledge are the abilities to…

I don't concur. A few examples:

I was working on a iOS App that connects to a GraphQL API. All GraphQL are POSTs. POSTs aren't cacheable. I had to implement a client-side cache. Implementing a cache, understanding the pros/cons of an implementation, is an exercise in CS.

I was implementing an animation. I drew the animation out on graph paper and worked out the transformations using stuff I learned in my linear algebra and computer graphics classes.

And in general, thinking through the tradeoffs of Swift vs Objective-C or REST vs GraphQL or Ruby vs Elixir, etc, etc is an exercise in CS.

Unfortunately, we seem to live in a cargo cult world. Good enough for Facebook/Google/Etc? Good enough for us. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Re: Teach Yourself Computer Science

#30

Post by hobls » Sat, Jul 21, 2018, 6:36 PM UTC

agumonkey wrote: post #23

hobls wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even most of video game development is simply using features of the existing engine. Some basic 3D math is required, but nothing crazy. You do find some gnarly problems in engine development though. (And some of the sub-disciplines like the network and graphics programmers.)

So CS should get a job at tooling companies because that's where deep things are done ?

I don’t think it’s nearly that simple. Some teams are product teams, and they operate higher in the stack. Some teams are straight engineering teams, and they operate much lower in the stack. Lower does not always equal more technical though. A product team dealing with incredible scale can still require deep CS knowledge.

My experience is that teams that act as a platform (and I’m using this term very loosely) tend to have lower level problems to solve. Think of AWS teams vs. large companies. A large company might be dealing with high scale; something like 100k+ transactions per second. An AWS team can have many large companies as their customers, so their scale gets ridiculous; much higher than any single company. This can require more traditional CS knowledge.

Some individual engineers love shipping products though — they like writing a LOT of code and getting things out the door. Some engineers like very carefully working on MASSIVE systems, but they end up releasing way less code. Other engineers like working on very low level embedded systems or whatever.

There are a lot of problems to solve, and none of them are necessarily strictly harder than each other. Some people who can support systems at incredible scale simply cannot cope with the speed of back to back product launches, and vice versa. There are tons of types of talent.