161–167 of 167 posts
I've retaken subjects by watching MIT courses on youtube. It shakes the rust off, and it comes back.
EdX or just lectures? Do you do the assignments?
No, it is NOT normal if you truly mean you remember nothing from your studies. I really hope that is not the case and that you have only forgotten the intricate details (which is fine). The absolute fundamentals (some of which are listed below) should never be forgotten. 1) Computer Architecture vs. Organization, CPU/Execution Units/Caches/Memory, Clock, Pipelining, ILP, Multiprocessor, SoC. 2) OS responsibilities -…
It might take years to study these topics in depth
I tend to be a somewhat slow learner but once I've learned something, I seem to remember it forever (I only lose a little bit of detail). I remember most of the stuff from university 10 years ago including the brand and model of the microcontroller I programmed (ATMEL ATMEGA8-16PU) and the names of the I/O registers on that chip, the name of the program I used to program it with (AVR Studio). I also remember most stu…
That sounds like unusually good memory, almost like Michael Ross level. Make good use of that!
On the flip side, sometimes I don't even notice (much less remember) certain things. When I'm visiting a new city with someone else, I never seem to be able to remember how to get back to the starting point - I recognize almost none of the streets or landmarks on the way back (aside from a few particularly interesting ones). My mind just delegates the full responsibility of finding the way back to the other person. It's not a problem if I'm visiting a city alone though.
You should invert the question: since EVERYONE forgets all of this CS stuff then perhaps teaching this CS stuff to us programmers is a complete waste of our time in the 1st place? So it's not YOU who is "wrong": it's the universities who have it backwards and are disconnected from the real world work that programmers do.
It just means you've been doing jobs where CS is (apparently) unimportant. If you're ok with that type of job then by all means, continue, it pays the bills. The downside is that it might get mind-numbingly boring in the future. Pushing bits between API calls isn't exactly computer science.
CS is unimportant in 99% of jobs. What's important in a job is making an impact in the company you work for. This means building product features, improving systems etc. but this rarely intersects with "CS" problems