from Hacker News

The Computer Science Book (2020)

by r4victor on 1/11/23, 8:05 AM with 22 comments

  • by agomez314 on 1/11/23, 12:10 PM

    It's nice to see the author spent a great deal of time and effort to share with others his learnings. However it's important to note his intention at writing this book: "I’ve chosen to focus on topics and concepts that I’ve encountered in my programming career – things that I know are important." Thus it's not an overview of Computer Science per se (which in my opinion is a fuzzy subject without clear boundaries) but subjects the author frequently encountered and perhaps heard as important things in the field.

    I would also caution in how the book presents its chosen subjects as "Computer Science." Like the adage goes, "Computer Science is not so much about computers like petri dishes are about biology, or telescopes are about astronomy." There's so much beauty and variety in the field that it's really hard to just pin down in a curriculum. See "A Mathematician's Lament" [1]

    I also challenge the notion that some of these subjects logically proceed from the other (some, not all).

    I've got no problem with anyone reading the book, they'll be certainly much more informed about the field of computers in general. I especially appreciated the Further Reading sections to let the reader expand his learning. Thanks for sharing this post!

    [1] https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/LockhartsLament....

  • by bambataa on 1/11/23, 2:03 PM

    Author here! Thank you to whoever posted this. My 2023 resolution was to market it better so this is a great help :).

    The overall intent was to create a single, fairly concise volume sketching out the main areas of computer science so that developers from non-traditional backgrounds (boot camps etc) have at least some kind of map of the territory.

    When I started working as a dev I really struggled with the idea that there were so many things that I should know about but I wasn’t even aware of until they blew up in my face in some way.

    agomez314’s comment is very valid — my framing was “CS stuff that you will encounter as a developer”.

    Happy to answer any questions.

  • by tinytorus on 1/11/23, 4:50 PM

    Like another commenter said, studied CS and didn't do well in every class, so excited to refresh my knowledge this year. Curious if anyone knows of a similar resource for cybersecurity (also a huge field, but ig looking for a broad overview of the landscape for a curious layperson).

  • by harshalaxman on 1/11/23, 4:10 PM

    I did a joint major in math and computer science for undergrad so I missed out on a lot of subjects like computer architecture, operating systems, and compilers.

    This looks like the perfect depth for me to get up to speed at a relaxed pace over a few months: simpler than a textbook but more robust and instructive than blog posts, Wikipedia etc.

    A few cents:

    - not sure if it's already nestled in some chapters, but cryptography is the most important missing topic imo

    - if there ends up being a print copy I would happily purchase it

    - the name makes it hard to find: a google search for "computer science book" doesn't have a first page result

  • by Alifatisk on 1/11/23, 10:07 PM

    I don't have a computer science degree and probably won't get one but I would love to study it on my free time, which book or books would you all recommend that covers it well?

  • by jam3sn on 1/11/23, 12:37 PM

    This looks great and covers a lot of interesting areas.

  • by Frummy on 1/11/23, 4:49 PM

    I skimmed it all and found it very interesting and will probably read it multiple times.

  • by gnull on 1/14/23, 2:42 PM

    Good to see that it starts with Computability and Complexity.

  • by shaftoe444 on 1/11/23, 11:41 AM

    This looks really good. The further reading sections in themselves contain some gold.