Similar but different from https://www.bartlettpublishing.com/site/product/programming-...
Computer Science from the Bottom Up
11–20 of 104 posts
Re: Computer Science from the Bottom Up
#12This is not computer science. I see nary a reference to data structures or algorithms, or math of any kind. These are all engineering concerns, not science.
hmm, applied science is not engineering ?
Applied science is engineering, by and large, but it's worthwhile to have different words for different things. 'Engineering' is one, 'Science' is another, even though the latter is useful to the former.
Of course, Computer Science is almost no science, most degrees are some blend of math and engineering.
Re: Computer Science from the Bottom Up
#13This seems highly focused on systems; I wouldn't call it representative of "Computer Science" as a whole. Only maybe 2-3 of the classes in my computer science degree were focused on this kind of stuff. Still seems like a good resource, just perhaps mislabeled.
> This seems highly focused on systems; I wouldn't call it representative of "Computer Science" as a whole.
I'd agree with this, but it fits with how a certain set of schools teaches their core. They will teach a set of related classes around the topics here: computer architecture, operating systems, and networking, because this is often central to their research interests. Others will scatter this information across a number of unrelated courses to check the box, or skip it entirely because their research doesn't touch as heavily on these topics.
Further research on the author suggests they are from New Zealand. I'm from the UK and live in the US. What I see taught in US CS degrees is somewhat different from what I saw in the UK, and heard about from friends in continental Europe. I imagine the author's experience is similar.
A further bias from the author, and I'm making big assumptions, is that see value here because they've worked in places that do lot of system programming. Mentions of VMware and Red Hat on https://www.wienand.org.
Re: Computer Science from the Bottom Up
#14I think these CS books should start with a philosophical look at what kind of thing computation actually is, rather than diving straight into UNIX file system structures with barely any context.
But I guess that would be computer science from the top down.
Re: Computer Science from the Bottom Up
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m surprised you had that many. My CS program had nothing comparable that I can remember. Definitely not computer science.
We had one called "Systems Programming" that was a whirlwind intro to everything Unix (6 weeks on bash, 6 weeks on C, 6 weeks on Perl, a mishmash of SSH and everything-is-a-file and Unix-philosophy, etc) We had another called "Operating Systems" that focused on things like concurrency, building a really basic memory pager, etc (mix of C and Java I think) And we had one other called "Networking" that was sort of along…
That sounds a lot like part of the UofT CS program.
Re: Computer Science from the Bottom Up
#16I think these CS books should start with a philosophical look at what kind of thing computation actually is, rather than diving straight into UNIX file system structures with barely any context. But I guess that would be computer science from the top down.
Good book on that is Introduction to the Theory of Computation by Michael Sipser.
One could argue it's from the very bottom up, not much practicum lies in that text.
Re: Computer Science from the Bottom Up
#17The ELF binary format, really? This is like a course advertising itself as an introduction to normative ethics and proceeding to lecture people on canon law in the 14th century in Flanders. Like sure if you into obscure shit this might be interesting but dunno what one has to do with the other.
Re: Computer Science from the Bottom Up
#18Looks more like computer engineering than computer science.
Re: Computer Science from the Bottom Up
#19In the beginning, bell labs invented the transistor...
Re: Computer Science from the Bottom Up
#20The ELF binary format, really? This is like a course advertising itself as an introduction to normative ethics and proceeding to lecture people on canon law in the 14th century in Flanders. Like sure if you into obscure shit this might be interesting but dunno what one has to do with the other.
Well, more like the common law in the 21st century in the USA. Quite useful in nowadays practice, but obviously neither universal nor eternal. But could be a good starting point as a running example, or a reference point when comparing to the "civil law" systems.