Ask HN: I'm looking for a good book on the fundamentals of CS

#1

Post by Karsteski » Thu, Dec 09, 2021, 3:14 PM UTC

I'm at the beginning of my software dev career, and as I didn't go to school for anything related (B.Sc. Chemistry), I feel like I really would like to have the fundamentals of CS down. Doubly so as I would like to go into the field of VR, and right now I'm working on my own toy rendering engine, which I feel is really exposing my lack of knowledge...

Anyways, any suggestions welcome. Ideally it'd be more digestible than just a plain textbook but I'm open to anything. I imagine either way it'll be a tough but great read to work through :)

Re: Ask HN: I'm looking for a good book on the fundamentals of CS

#2

Post by kindalost » Thu, Dec 09, 2021, 3:25 PM UTC

Concrete Mathematics: A Foundation for Computer Science, by Ronald Graham, Donald Knuth, and Oren Patashnik.

Re: Ask HN: I'm looking for a good book on the fundamentals of CS

#3

Post by Karsteski » Thu, Dec 09, 2021, 3:28 PM UTC

kindalost wrote: post #2

Concrete Mathematics: A Foundation for Computer Science, by Ronald Graham, Donald Knuth, and Oren Patashnik.

Oh I know Donald Knuth from the Lex Fridman podcast. I am noting that it was written in 1994. Would any problems result from this?

Re: Ask HN: I'm looking for a good book on the fundamentals of CS

#4

Post by pvg » Thu, Dec 09, 2021, 3:32 PM UTC

Karsteski wrote: post #3

kindalost wrote: post #2

Concrete Mathematics: A Foundation for Computer Science, by Ronald Graham, Donald Knuth, and Oren Patashnik.

Oh I know Donald Knuth from the Lex Fridman podcast. I am noting that it was written in 1994. Would any problems result from this?

No but it's a maths textbook more than anything else. Not really a starting point for the sort of thing you're describing.

Re: Ask HN: I'm looking for a good book on the fundamentals of CS

#5

Post by ogsalmanxx » Thu, Dec 09, 2021, 3:32 PM UTC

Karsteski wrote: post #3

kindalost wrote: post #2

Concrete Mathematics: A Foundation for Computer Science, by Ronald Graham, Donald Knuth, and Oren Patashnik.

Oh I know Donald Knuth from the Lex Fridman podcast. I am noting that it was written in 1994. Would any problems result from this?

It’s a fundamentals thing, you will have to practice it a lot before it clicks and becomes practical for you to use on a daily basis.

But it won’t help you land a job at a startup, for that you need to learn JavaScript or C++

Re: Ask HN: I'm looking for a good book on the fundamentals of CS

#6

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Dec 09, 2021, 3:33 PM UTC

Karsteski wrote: post #3

kindalost wrote: post #2

Concrete Mathematics: A Foundation for Computer Science, by Ronald Graham, Donald Knuth, and Oren Patashnik.

Oh I know Donald Knuth from the Lex Fridman podcast. I am noting that it was written in 1994. Would any problems result from this?

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: I'm looking for a good book on the fundamentals of CS

#7

Post by ogsalmanxx » Thu, Dec 09, 2021, 3:34 PM UTC

Textbooks are the old way to learn, but sometimes old is gold.

Use videos for faster learning though. It’s pretty much learning on cruise mode.

Re: Ask HN: I'm looking for a good book on the fundamentals of CS

#8

Post by tjr » Thu, Dec 09, 2021, 3:36 PM UTC

ogsalmanxx wrote: post #7

Textbooks are the old way to learn, but sometimes old is gold. Use videos for faster learning though. It’s pretty much learning on cruise mode.

Asking as an avid textbook fan -- what might be some videos that you especially like?

Re: Ask HN: I'm looking for a good book on the fundamentals of CS

#9

Post by bern4444 » Thu, Dec 09, 2021, 3:37 PM UTC

My favorite CS book is structure and interpretation of computer programs.

I used it for one of my college CS classes. The book was written to be a semester class and MIT even has various offerings of their version of the course recorded and available on YouTube.

The book is online and available for free.

https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/sicp/full-text/...

Re: Ask HN: I'm looking for a good book on the fundamentals of CS

#10

Post by yakubin » Thu, Dec 09, 2021, 3:38 PM UTC

I'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 IPC programming in Unix, but didn't like them, so I also stayed away from TCP/IP Illustrated, but others have different opinions.

[1]: https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/taocp.html>

[2]: https://www.csapp.cs.cmu.edu/>

[3]: https://www.pearson.com/us/higher-education/program/Comer-In...>