Teach Yourself Computer Science • Hacker News Board

Re: Teach Yourself Computer Science

#271

Post by SZJX » Sat, Jun 27, 2020, 2:44 PM UTC

hckr_news wrote: post #38

panic wrote: post #32

Has anyone here learned a subject by going through one of these "teach yourself" lists? I've learned most of what I know about computers on my own, but it wasn't from following a list of textbooks. And when I've tried to follow a course like this for other subjects, despite my initial interest, I've found myself unable to make it through more than a couple chapters of the first textbook before running out of steam. B…

I graduated with a degree in BioSciences a few years ago, and elected to not do grad school like my peers. I saw no point of losing thousands of dollars to do a master’s in Bioinformatics/Data just to get a jr level job. That summer after graduation from undergrad I attempted to learn CS and go through OSS Computer Science program and TeachYourSelfCS to break into the industry. The problem was a lot of it wasn’t job…

If your aim is to do some less demanding programming, e.g. using a framework without fully understanding how things all work together, then focusing more on practical projects could definitely help. However, this dichotomy between "CS" and "SWE" is a very dangerous idea. Once you have a solid grounding in CS, the software you write will be of much higher quality, you'll ship code faster, and you'll avoid many mistakes since you have a clear idea of what you're doing instead of just trying to blindly copy recipes.

Particularly helpful I would say is a solid idea in programming language theory and I can't recommend the MOOC by Dan Grossman from the University of Washington highly enough. As he said, even if you never get to program in the languages used throughout the course, you will become a much better programmer after finishing the course.

Re: Teach Yourself Computer Science

#272

Post by SZJX » Sat, Jun 27, 2020, 2:50 PM UTC

nextos wrote: post #162

tarkin2 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd never heard of OSSU, thanks. The maths courses linked in that are good, too.

The OSSU curriculum has a nice selection of textbooks. However, I am concerned with the fact that these curated lists lack a unifying idea of what CS is. If you go to pure math instead, the consensus is clear. A pure math bootcamp, like Math 55, is mostly linear algebra and real analysis, taught from Axler and Rudin in its current iteration. Simpler math curriculums progress more slowly, or use easier textbooks, but…

This "Software Foundations" series feels to me like a focused exploration on PL. I totally agree that a solid grasp on PL theories is actually one of the most helpful things you could do to become a better programmer, and the MOOC by Dan Grossman from the University of Washington is amazing on this. But I'm not sure if this is exactly the same as learning "logic and computation".

Re: Teach Yourself Computer Science

#273

Post by Technetium » Wed, Jul 01, 2020, 6:32 PM UTC

mcguire wrote: post #211

kyawzazaw wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are accredited and mostly pursued by already practicing software engineers who want to check the box for a degree.

That's not an answer. :-)

Accredited is indeed a valid answer https://www.wgu.edu/missouri/about/accreditation.html