from Hacker News

A guide for people who want to self-study the basics of computer science

by tsingy on 6/18/23, 1:43 PM with 79 comments

  • by hahhahanananana on 6/18/23, 2:30 PM

    > High School Mathematics

    Whenever I try to catch up with maths (in Khan Academy and elsewhere), I always end up in an awkward state where I keep recursively researching less and less advanced subjects because of gaps of various sizes in my fundamental knowledge. It's incredibly demotivating.

  • by imranq on 6/18/23, 7:50 PM

    I had a student who was basically performing at a 6th grade math level despite being in 11th grade. I told that student to go through Khan Academy starting from Pre-K all the way to 12th grade and don't continue unless they achieved mastery. That student went from the C math student, to ultimately scoring a perfect score on the SAT II Math. So I highly recommend everyone start for the absolute basics, even if it feels like a blow to the ego
  • by ggr2342 on 6/18/23, 3:05 PM

    For understanding higher math I have found this primer course extremely useful:

    Introduction to Mathematical Thinking by Keith Devlin (Stanford) https://www.coursera.org/learn/mathematical-thinking

  • by hcks on 6/18/23, 2:27 PM

    That’s just the usual memes. Is this about « computer science » ? Then why isn’t there anything logic, algorithms, Turing machines, etc.. Is this « dev »? Then what’s the point of discrete maths?
  • by satvikpendem on 6/18/23, 3:51 PM

    I've found Teach Yourself CS a better resource, albeit more advanced: https://teachyourselfcs.com
  • by totierne2 on 6/18/23, 2:41 PM

    I am looking for a bottle of computer science motivation for my 16 year old. I do an hour a week coding with him. It is not enough, he does no coding in between times. There are other things he prioritises ahead of coding. (School, music, YouTube videos, and chess.)
  • by KnobbleMcKnees on 6/18/23, 2:23 PM

    Not sure on the prerequisites. I have absolutely no discipline and still managed to get my compsci degree!
  • by cactusfrog on 6/18/23, 3:38 PM

    The CMU database course is fire

    I want to make a non C++ workbook for that course to write an s3-based relational database (for fun), but I don’t have time for other projects because of poor time management

  • by tsingy on 6/18/23, 1:43 PM

    Might interest some people looking to learn some Computer Science basics. It's a small aggregation of openly auditable university courses.
  • by qazpot on 6/19/23, 7:33 AM

    If someone is interested I highly recommend Tech Yourself CS website, it is much more concise and complete set of resources.

    https://teachyourselfcs.com/

  • by teunispeters on 6/18/23, 5:49 PM

    As someone who could never afford to get a degree at university, I love this kind of stuff!

    I have gaps in my own knowledge, so I keep going through stuff, to find what I'm missing and fill it in. Eg I'm not great on O(x) calculations.

  • by EGreg on 6/18/23, 3:02 PM

    Is this like Poor Richard's Almanac?