6 ms·

Self taught programmer and I'm strong in all these areas. You can read three books and know all of this. It does not require a college education. In fact the TC

Self taught programmer and I'm strong in all these areas. You can read three books and know all of this. It does not require a college education. In fact the TCP/IP stack and Linux I learned back in high school just by reading two books. It wasn't hard. The Data structures and algorithms I picked up a few years later when I was about college age. Again, you can read books about this stuff. It's not that hard. If anything, a self-study program with a list of books to read and skills to master would save many self taught / self motivated people quite a bit of time, but its absence is by no means a show stopper.

madeuptempacct 8y ago
What three books? (Especially interested in data transfer protocols - I got a little bit into it for game development, but never found anything resembling a good source). I learned a lot of these things from taking Harvard's CS50 online, reading the blog posts I linked (and doing problems), and I would imagine this book (https://bigmachine.io/products/the-imposters-handbook/ https://bigmachine.io/products/the-imposters-handbook/) would help out - a friend recommended it, but I never got around to it. https://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-Software/dp/0735611319 https://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-Softw... ^Covers logic gates and the basics of how a computer is built to an incredible degree, but it's VERY time intensive. Still, I really recommend it.
- ryanmarsh 8y ago
  These days CS50 lectures are online. The TCP/IP and Linux books I can't recall. That was some 20+ years ago. I think the TCP/IP/Protocols book was from Sams and the Linux book(s) were from O'Reilly. Algorithms/Data was The Algorithm Design Manual by Skiena. Cracking the Coding Interview is great too. Crypto was just a bunch of reading online, I haven't found a good book on that I would recommend, same for data transfer protocols. I didn't just read three books, I'm saying, 20/20 hindsight I could have read about 3 books to garner most of the stuff I didn't learn by skipping college. Maybe some of us self taught developers should get together and curate a clear path for CS knowledge and ancillary helpful things.
  - madeuptempacct 8y ago
    "Maybe some of us self taught developers should get together and curate a clear path for CS knowledge and ancillary helpful things." I wouldn't mind spending some time contributing to something like that. There is an endless amount of material to read and classes to take, but narrowing it down and prioritizing is the hard part.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
vxNsr 8y ago
Please share the 3 books that taught you everything on this list. Not being sarcastic, I would love to have them.
- thaumaturgy 8y ago
  Given the timeline he mentioned, the TCP/IP one may have been "Inside TCP/IP". It was an extremely valuable reference at one time, but it's a bit dated now. I'm just about to finally give away my copy.
  - vxNsr 8y ago
    You wouldn't happen to have a good suggestion to replace it?
    - thaumaturgy 8y ago
      You might try the two-volume "TCP/IP Illustrated" set, although I haven't personally read those. Otherwise, no, as far as I know there was never an edition of "Inside TCP/IP" published after 1997, and no book exactly took its place. Which is a real shame. If you just want to get a good sense of UDP, ICMP, TCP/IP, datagram headers, and a handful of older protocols (like FTP), "Inside TCP/IP" is still valuable.

madeuptempacct 8y ago

What three books? (Especially interested in data transfer protocols - I got a little bit into it for game development, but never found anything resembling a good source). I learned a lot of these things from taking Harvard's CS50 online, reading the blog posts I linked (and doing problems), and I would imagine this book (https://bigmachine.io/products/the-imposters-handbook/ https://bigmachine.io/products/the-imposters-handbook/) would help out - a friend recommended it, but I never got around to it. https://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-Software/dp/0735611319 https://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-Softw... ^Covers logic gates and the basics of how a computer is built to an incredible degree, but it's VERY time intensive. Still, I really recommend it.

ryanmarsh 8y ago
These days CS50 lectures are online. The TCP/IP and Linux books I can't recall. That was some 20+ years ago. I think the TCP/IP/Protocols book was from Sams and the Linux book(s) were from O'Reilly. Algorithms/Data was The Algorithm Design Manual by Skiena. Cracking the Coding Interview is great too. Crypto was just a bunch of reading online, I haven't found a good book on that I would recommend, same for data transfer protocols. I didn't just read three books, I'm saying, 20/20 hindsight I could have read about 3 books to garner most of the stuff I didn't learn by skipping college. Maybe some of us self taught developers should get together and curate a clear path for CS knowledge and ancillary helpful things.
- madeuptempacct 8y ago
  "Maybe some of us self taught developers should get together and curate a clear path for CS knowledge and ancillary helpful things." I wouldn't mind spending some time contributing to something like that. There is an endless amount of material to read and classes to take, but narrowing it down and prioritizing is the hard part.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

vxNsr 8y ago

Please share the 3 books that taught you everything on this list. Not being sarcastic, I would love to have them.

thaumaturgy 8y ago
Given the timeline he mentioned, the TCP/IP one may have been "Inside TCP/IP". It was an extremely valuable reference at one time, but it's a bit dated now. I'm just about to finally give away my copy.
- vxNsr 8y ago
  You wouldn't happen to have a good suggestion to replace it?
  - thaumaturgy 8y ago
    You might try the two-volume "TCP/IP Illustrated" set, although I haven't personally read those. Otherwise, no, as far as I know there was never an edition of "Inside TCP/IP" published after 1997, and no book exactly took its place. Which is a real shame. If you just want to get a good sense of UDP, ICMP, TCP/IP, datagram headers, and a handful of older protocols (like FTP), "Inside TCP/IP" is still valuable.