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It's a guided study, but because doing the guided study is daunting and would take years, in practice many people (among those who read it at all) tend to use i
by svat 3y ago
It's a guided study, but because doing the guided study is daunting and would take years, in practice many people (among those who read it at all) tend to use it as a reference, dipping in to specific topics here and there.
- DonHopkins 3y agoIf you're looking for a shortcut, read Peter Norvig's "Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years". https://norvig.com/21-days.html https://norvig.com/21-days.html
- coolThingsFirst 3y ago[flagged]
- DonHopkins 3y agoNot to continue learning to program for at least 10 years?
- dang 3y agoPlease don't post shallow dismissals. If another comment is wrong, it's great to explain why (as long as you do it without swipes etc. - see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). But if you don't explain why, the comment doesn't contain any information that people can learn from, and is just a putdown. We're trying to avoid that here.
- coolThingsFirst 3y agoyeah, i'll fix it sorry
- dang 3y agoAppreciated!
- coolThingsFirst 3y agoHere's the reason why this is totally wrong advice: 1) Time is important, there's ageism in tech and you need to plan your career wisely - no one is going to do it for you. The best way to learn is to get hired ASAP and get professional experience. 2) College degree is very important. In this market, people are struggling to get jobs with experience & degrees. You just have much less likelier chance of success without a degree. This appears all the time, even actual prodigies like George Hotz are overcompensating and always appear eager to prove that they have the fundamentals down like a CS grad. 3) Moving fast into building things which generate hype is the best course of action for young people I know a friend that got to interview stage with a FAANG they told him the position was for university degree holders. This is an old essay and I'd always take with a grain of salt what people say versus how the reality is. It's very easy to get wrong advice that's no longer applicable.
- starcraft2wol 3y agoLet's imagine there was a 20 year old who dropped out of CS and spent the next 2 years reading Knuth and entered the work force at 22. Can you see any way that student would not be succesful? I know someone who did something very similar (but in math) and jumped into a grad math program at age 17.
- coolThingsFirst 3y agoThey would be at a significant disadvantage over students that completed their degree. Reading TAOCP is the least efficient way to learn about algorithms. Just because something is harder doesn't mean it's better. Can't even put TAOCP in resume without appearing cringe. >I know someone who did something very similar (but in math) and jumped into a grad math program at age 17. Can you share more about this, even IMO medalists go to undergrad first.
- starcraft2wol 3y ago> Reading TAOCP is the least efficient way to learn about algorithms "Learning the algorithms" isn't a binary checkbox. It's a gradient of thinking and math skills, ranging up to a researcher in the field. TAOCP is the only book I know if that will give you that depth. Learning those skills is not for everyone, but can be extremely valuable, and open a lot more doors than graduating with a class of 10,000 other CS students. > Can you share more about this, even IMO medalists go to undergrad first. He was an "undergrad" whose first math class was graduate real analysis.