I'm interested in books or other resources that can help teach computer science fundamentals and theory for people (me...) who have a strong development background but no formal education.
What are some resources to help self-taught developers learn CS theory?
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Re: What are some resources to help self-taught developers learn CS theory?
#2Here are some results when this question was asked last time: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=%22computer+science+fundamentals%2.... Start there and if you still can't find what you need then make your question more focused. I also searched for "computer science" "books" and got even more results: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu....
Re: What are some resources to help self-taught developers learn CS theory?
#3teachyourselfcs.com
Re: What are some resources to help self-taught developers learn CS theory?
#4Re: What are some resources to help self-taught developers learn CS theory?
#5https://bigmachine.io/products/the-imposters-handbook/
That looks pretty cool, thanks for the info. I think I’m gonna go buy it for the hell of it.
Re: What are some resources to help self-taught developers learn CS theory?
#6Re: What are some resources to help self-taught developers learn CS theory?
#7[my standard unpopular answer]
CS is hard for everyone. There are no easy parts. Even for Knuth who has been writing The Art of Computer Programming for almost sixty years. It was started when everybody was self taught. It is still for self-teaching. Even for people with degrees. Even if that degree is a PhD.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying "don't use anything else." But TAoCP is the backbone of everything else. It's all the messy details and the messy details matter a big part of the time. It is good to be fearful of the messy details. It is bad to be afraid of them.
Good luck.
Re: What are some resources to help self-taught developers learn CS theory?
#8https://bigmachine.io/products/the-imposters-handbook/
That looks pretty cool, thanks for the info. I think I’m gonna go buy it for the hell of it.
There are two books. Only one is available in the print version. The other one may be available in print soon.
The one that is available in print just arrived in my mail but I have not read it.
Re: What are some resources to help self-taught developers learn CS theory?
#9Since so many CS professors make their course materials available for free, you should take advantage of that and piggyback off of multiple sources. I often search for "[Concept] lecture notes", choose one of the links (based on reputability, amount of math, etc.), and check that the other sources say the same thing. You'd be surprised the extent which an independent explanation can fill in the gaps of your understanding.
CS theory is fairly modular, so there's no need to stick to a single set of course notes or textbook for different topics -- just find whoever does it best for a given topic.
Also do lots of problems.
Re: What are some resources to help self-taught developers learn CS theory?
#10[my standard unpopular answer] CS is hard for everyone. There are no easy parts. Even for Knuth who has been writing The Art of Computer Programming for almost sixty years. It was started when everybody was self taught. It is still for self-teaching. Even for people with degrees. Even if that degree is a PhD. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying "don't use anything else." But TAoCP is the backbone of everything else. I…
Taocp is absolutely not a good introduction to computer science and is also not advisable as an undergraduate algorithms book.
It is only partially complete and does not touch concurrency, parallelism, complexity theory or the theory of computation. It is more of a comprehensive reference work for a small selection of topics.
The fact that you think taocp is the backbone for everything else tells me that you have not actually read the book, just like everyone else.