Michelle Murrain wrote:
> I have a question for the group.
>
> I imagine many of you are self taught, as I am.
> Do folks have suggestions on how to go about learning some of this stuff-
> I've thought about just getting a list of CS textbooks, and going through
> them myself, one by one (I'm a very good book learner). I don't have time to
> go back to school, either virtually or otherwise.
I'm college-taught (or university - I'm not sure what our tertiary
education system corresponds to).
To an extent, you never learn /everything/. There's just too much
to learn!
However, I have noticed that formally-trained programmers who attended
really good courses seem to know stuff that people who have just learned
this-language and that-language don't seem to know.
I'm not sure how to learn it, or how to teach it, though I am planning
to try writing a set of articles on 'this stuff'.
Oddly enough, I have some recommendations:
* study calculus, especially propositional and predicate calculus.
* study the theory of programming languages, get familiar
with the language families, become familiar with the fact that you
can write a pseudocode for a language family and then translate from
that into any language in the family.
* learn the architecture of computers. Learn how the CPU
works. Learn at least one assembly language, though you don't need
to write anything more difficult than a fibionacci sequence. This is
to ensure that you KNOW how your program actually runs through the CPU,
or can at least make a good guess.
There's other stuff - you can't summarise a 3-year degree in a single
email. But that's a start.
Jenn V.
--
"Do you ever wonder if there's a whole section of geek culture
you miss out on by being a geek?" - Dancer.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Jenn Vesperman http://www.simegen.com/~jenn/
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