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Teach Yourself Computer Science

teachyourselfcs.com

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Re: Teach Yourself Computer Science

#151

Post by hckr_news »

mmhsieh wrote: post #130
hckr_news wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Curious to know: do you feel that you are at any disadvantage to peers who came to your role who went through a traditional CS or computer engineering undergrad program?

On the job, not really. Plenty of resources online that allow me to commit to continuous learning.

Re: Teach Yourself Computer Science

#152

Post by [deleted] »

brainless wrote: post #117
brainless wrote: post #69

Are you thinking or debating if getting a deeper understanding of CS will help you or your career? I am thinking of the same. Even though I have a Bachelor of Science (BSc) in Computer Science, it has been 14 years that I actually used any of it. I regret it sometimes since I know what it is to know how things work underneath the high level languages (PHP, JavaScript and Python for me). Lately I have started taking m…

I want to add something to this, something that I am understanding now perhaps because I have slowed down as a person. Learning is HARD, really really hard. More so when there are tons of social, professional and personal distractions. On top of this I am chased by procrastination. I have gotten a much better grip at this. But just as an example - I have tried learning Rust at least 4 times before since Rust got high…

[deleted]

Re: Teach Yourself Computer Science

#153

Post by throwawaygh »

M5x7wI3CmbEem10 wrote: post #109
throwawaygh wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More than all of it, but also none of it. You can always just hack the interview process if your primary goal is a job at a particular Big Co. In that case, learning all of the material is probably an extraordinarily inefficient path toward your goal. But "any dumbass can hack can hack mega-corp hiring processes" is sort of obvious. If your goal is to do the real thing, as opposed to knowing how to hack the American…

I just want to feed my family... I’ll worry about enlightenment later.

Having an actually solid foundation when you're being paid 300K to be expert isn't "enlightenment". It's "appropriately qualified".

Hacking the hiring process has a good effort vs reward ratio, but it's also high risk. The risk is that obvious gaps in the candidate's background surface after starting the position. Which usually doesn't turn out well: best case career stagnates and worst case the candidate ends up on the bottom of a stack rank when things get lean.

It's a risk that can be taken in a calculated way. Sometimes things turn out well. Sometimes not.

Re: Teach Yourself Computer Science

#154

Post by pdxandi »

dreary_dugong wrote: post #145
ascotan wrote: post #138

Having gone through all of these course myself, I'm wondering if this stuff is really relevant to today's workforce? Compiler Design? How to build an Operating System? I remember in a job writing my own BNF grammer and a a parser for it to optimize something or other and I got back basically "WTF" on the code review. I would say database fundamentals is a must, so is networking. But honestly the rest is iffy. When wa…

To be fair, this isn't "teach yourself the skills necessary to be successful in a development job," it's "teach yourself computer science."

I'm being sincere when I ask: what would you do with a self-taught CS background? I understand many of the larger companies require an understanding of CS principles, but, if not to be a successful developer, how useful is a self-taught CS education? What do you do with it if not software development? In my somewhat limited experience, the more CS-focused folks hold PhDs, and sometimes I feel it's more about the credentials than the education.

Re: Teach Yourself Computer Science

#155

Post by belly_joe »

brainless wrote: post #117
brainless wrote: post #69

Are you thinking or debating if getting a deeper understanding of CS will help you or your career? I am thinking of the same. Even though I have a Bachelor of Science (BSc) in Computer Science, it has been 14 years that I actually used any of it. I regret it sometimes since I know what it is to know how things work underneath the high level languages (PHP, JavaScript and Python for me). Lately I have started taking m…

I want to add something to this, something that I am understanding now perhaps because I have slowed down as a person. Learning is HARD, really really hard. More so when there are tons of social, professional and personal distractions. On top of this I am chased by procrastination. I have gotten a much better grip at this. But just as an example - I have tried learning Rust at least 4 times before since Rust got high…

I think this is an extremely common experience. At least it maps really well to what I've gone through. Small surges of "motivation" wherein I embark on projects and then they taper off, constant battles with procrastination, etc.

However, at least in my experience, it's possible to develop tools and systems to stay disciplined enough to finish what I committed to. Not every tool works for every type of project so it's a constant battle. The good news, though, is that you can fail at this as many times as you'd like (I certainly have) but you only have to succeed once!

Re: Teach Yourself Computer Science

#156

Post by quicklime »

throwawaygh wrote: post #153
M5x7wI3CmbEem10 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just want to feed my family... I’ll worry about enlightenment later.

Having an actually solid foundation when you're being paid 300K to be expert isn't "enlightenment". It's "appropriately qualified". Hacking the hiring process has a good effort vs reward ratio, but it's also high risk. The risk is that obvious gaps in the candidate's background surface after starting the position. Which usually doesn't turn out well: best case career stagnates and worst case the candidate ends up on…

I really agree with this. I didn't take the distributed systems course when I was at university, but later I still managed to work at a few FAANGs. Flicking through the material in the MIT 6.824 course, I really wish I learnt this before I needed it, rather than scrambling to learn it piecemeal as things came up. I would've been promoted faster, and things would've been less stressful.

It is possible to learn this on the job. But with hindsight, my advice would be to just take the easy way out and learn it beforehand.

Re: Teach Yourself Computer Science

#157

Post by shpongled »

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 think I'm pretty good at self-teaching w/ textbooks. I will admit that there were 1 or 2 classes at college where I completely skipped the class and just read the textbook because I could absorb info faster than attending lecture.

I got a copy of Benjamin Pierce's `Types and Programming Languages` and I've read basically the full thing and have completed 80% of the exercises.

Currently working through a couple other textbooks slowly. I find that taking notes and doing the exercises is essential, otherwise I lose interest. (Same with online video courses)

Re: Teach Yourself Computer Science

#158

Post by natural219 »

This is very good. I would recommend this to anybody considering a career in software.

My only problem is that it's not very pedagogical; I don't think "read and study the foundations for 1000 hours, you twerp" is really the best approach to ease people in.

I would recommend starting small, making a webpage or some simple fun programs that you enjoy working on. MDN is a good resource (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn) for this, but there are probably better guides / tutors out there that can personalize an approach based on where you're at. Glitch is also cool (https://glitch.com/)

Re: Teach Yourself Computer Science

#160

Post by matt_LLVW »

stockstreaks wrote: post #144

Ha - super ironic that this would be atop HN today. I've recently decided to dive back into this journey as well. Anyway - I was watching the final lecture of David J. Malans CS50 course yesterday and found this awesome slide he shared. I screengrabbed it and now I share it with all of you. It's essentially "where to go from here and beyond" (by course) https://gyazo.com/919d9deef0d1767f685fab9b4bfc12fc

CS50 is how i started to learn CS. The fact that it's freely available worldwide is crazy. I could never follow a Harvard class otherwise, and the content is great.
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