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I'm in the similar situation as you (OP). My high school education was interrupted quite badly and 13 years after graduating I lack confidence in my comp sci en

I'm in the similar situation as you (OP). My high school education was interrupted quite badly and 13 years after graduating I lack confidence in my comp sci endeavors because my maths sucks so bad. I'd be interested to hear of any hackers who have missed education milestones (like high school maths) but gone and successfully filled in the gaps. The reason I'm asking is because I'm kind feeling that things like maths knowledge is layered on year after year and if you lack the foundation its really a huge amount of work to repair each successive layer. Passing on some wisdoms to the young hackers around here... I wish someone had grabbed me by the face in highschool and told how important all these layers of skills/knowledge would be for getting the kind of jobs I want now. <I come from a blue collar background - by the time I realised how important education was (age 22) it was too late to do much about it>

babyboy808 17y ago
"The reason I'm asking is because I'm kind feeling that things like maths knowledge is layered on year after year and if you lack the foundation its really a huge amount of work to repair each successive layer." Absolutely, the layers you mention is exactly why I want to start from scratch
bgutierrez 17y ago
I left school when I was 16 to do homeschool, which turned out to be nothing more than my parents buying me books when I asked for them and nothing more. I did my GED and dropped out of college, so I think that I can relate to how you feel. There's a huge inferiority complex that comes from having less education than others. Filling in the gaps is difficult but I've found that whenever I fill something in, I've benefited pretty quickly. Lately I realized that I sucked at systems programming concepts, so I've been reading about that, which has been really helpful. I make a living as a programmer, but I have to continually be studying to try and fill in gaps before I'm hurt by lack of knowledge. If someone can work through a discrete math textbook and do the exercises, I think they could get a lot out of it. Calculus has some important ideas, but I think the discrete math is much more relevant to every day programming. I took a course last year at my community college that used Discrete Mathematics with Applications, by Susanna S. Epp. I don't recall it requiring higher math than algebra, but it did require sharp thinking. Concrete Mathematics: A Foundation for Computer Science is probably a good textbook, but I haven't used it, so can't say anything about it.

babyboy808 17y ago

"The reason I'm asking is because I'm kind feeling that things like maths knowledge is layered on year after year and if you lack the foundation its really a huge amount of work to repair each successive layer." Absolutely, the layers you mention is exactly why I want to start from scratch

bgutierrez 17y ago

I left school when I was 16 to do homeschool, which turned out to be nothing more than my parents buying me books when I asked for them and nothing more. I did my GED and dropped out of college, so I think that I can relate to how you feel. There's a huge inferiority complex that comes from having less education than others. Filling in the gaps is difficult but I've found that whenever I fill something in, I've benefited pretty quickly. Lately I realized that I sucked at systems programming concepts, so I've been reading about that, which has been really helpful. I make a living as a programmer, but I have to continually be studying to try and fill in gaps before I'm hurt by lack of knowledge. If someone can work through a discrete math textbook and do the exercises, I think they could get a lot out of it. Calculus has some important ideas, but I think the discrete math is much more relevant to every day programming. I took a course last year at my community college that used Discrete Mathematics with Applications, by Susanna S. Epp. I don't recall it requiring higher math than algebra, but it did require sharp thinking. Concrete Mathematics: A Foundation for Computer Science is probably a good textbook, but I haven't used it, so can't say anything about it.