I cannot guarantee that my advice is the best, because I'm a mathematician, and not a computer scientist, but my own experience might be helpful nonetheless. I

I cannot guarantee that my advice is the best, because I'm a mathematician, and not a computer scientist, but my own experience might be helpful nonetheless. I had originally decided to become a mathematician because I read "Jurassic Park" for an English class, and was intrigued enough by "chaos theory" that I looked into it, and discovered what mathematical culture was like, and decided that I liked it very much. When I started college, I declared myself a double major: Mathematics/Computer Science--but reduced the Computer Science part to a minor, when I decided that it wasn't mathematical enough to my liking. Since then, I went on to get my PhD in math, and then decided that I'm not all that interested in teaching, so I've been working with computers since then. More recently, I've discovered Lisp and Haskell, but I have been finding it difficult to find the time to get through the "classics" like "Let Over Lambda", "Learn You a Haskell for Great Good", "The Art of the Meta-Object Protocol", "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs", and "On Lisp". Do I wish I could have gone through these things while I was a Computer Science minor? Yes, I certainly wish so: these systems are almost pure mathematics! Having said that, I'm not too disappointed that I didn't go through the program. I spent a three-year hiatus between my first and second year of college, and between that time, there was a shift from C++ to Java as the core Curriculum Language; even before that shift, however, I don't think my school was enlightened enough to pursue Lisp properly in its higher-level courses. My only regret with my educational path, though, was that I didn't get a chance to take the second semester of "Computer Architecture"--thus, I took the class that taught me how to construct computer gates (and a couple of other things--like "flip-flops", if I recall correctly), missed out on the semester that discussed creating memory, arithmetic units, and so forth. Oh, I would add, be wary of the grad school route: I do not regret going that route to learn the math I did, and I met my wife in the process, but I really wish I could have created a startup when I was younger! Having said that, I really wish I could make use of my mathematical knowledge somehow, right now, to start something...but the catch-22 is this: had I not gone through to get my Doctorate, I wouldn't have the mathematical background that I would like to use to do interesting things...