The world is not perfect and uniform but rather imperfect and exponential.Bursting mythsNo one understands the whole book. Not even the writers.Not everything in the book is equally important.Not everything is in the book is equally researched.Not everything is in the book is equally well explained.There are good parts and bad parts in every book.Know your limitsHuman brain is better designed to process things rather than to store information. Therefore, attack a small part of book at a time, internalise concepts.It takes time to internalise concepts. You need to sleep on a concept. It takes time to digest a concept. Nine women can’t deliver a baby in one month :)You cannot remember everything but you can index information in your brain. So when the problem is faced in real world, you will know where to look.Setting ExpectationsYou do not need to read/understand the whole book.You need to read only 20% of the book which contains the crux of the book.You need to be willing to get hands dirty. Use pen and paper. Write code.Not more than 33% of book is relevant to you at any point of time.First few chapters - basics and foundations - relevant for starters only.Mid chapters - Concepts built upon basics - For intermediate readers only.End Chapters - Abstract and somewhat vague concepts - For advanced users only.Setting Strategy and AimPower Law. 80/20 Rule. Almost always, you will find that some concepts are so basic that their solid understanding makes most of the following concepts easy. Aim: To discover and concentrate maximum energy on these parts.Example for CLRS: Big O analysis, master’s theorem, divide and rulePractical advice to identify high impact conceptsAvoid perfection. When you understand 80% of a chapter, move to next.Multi Pass Reading. Read the book in multiple pass. In first pass, you tend to figure out relative importance of the concepts in the book. In next pass, redistribute your energy on parts which are more impactful. Repeat this.
You have some good advice in earlier answers - the more you practice the better you’re going to get and the more confident you’ll become.For me - I learned most doing my first “real” project - I was 17 and was messing about with C, HTML, JavaScript (weird mix I know but I had my reasons) - a friend of mine wanted a website (with CMS so that he can aggregate promotional offers from different physical stores and display in one place) he asked if I know anyone who can do it - I said “hell yeah I can do it!” I asked him to pay me few hundred $ (at the time I had no clue how much should I ask and how long would it really take - I was thinking few weeks most).I went to book store (physical one) and started going through books to see if any described something similar. There was one PHP + MySQL book that got my attention - so I bought it - started reading and writing code - after two weeks I was feeling desperate I got two other books (it started to dawn on me that this was a complex task and a big project) but I didn’t want to disappoint him and myself (also I wanted the $ :))So I kept at it (long nights and days - just reading and coding) - finally after about 4 weeks I started to see some progress (I demoed what I had to him - he wanted few changes but was quite impressed overall). I had a great satisfaction from seeing it work and doing “real” thing for real business purpose.Was the code pretty - hell no, did it take a lot of my time and much longer than I though - you bet, did I accidentally delete some of my files and lose days of work - yep (learned the importance of source control that day), was I done learning - definitely no (it showed me how much I really don’t know yet).He went live with that app - and I used this app as a reference to get my first two programming jobs - so win - win!
Good at math, bad at programming?
IT and programming are fairly no longer a similar situation. there are a number of factors of IT that don't require stable math skills, yet programming definitely does. I genuinely have been a expert utility developer and have controlled programmers for some years. I genuinely have in no way universal a great programmer who wasn't important at math. And people who're no longer good at math continuously make programming blunders that require math to evade. the theory a calculator can help is in basic terms absurd. The issues programmers desire math for have no longer something to do with calculations and each little thing to do with algorithms and proofs. The project is determining the attitude to remedy the project, no longer genuinely imposing the attitude. A calculator won't help with that. grow to be this activity dressmaker a programmer? Do you have any theory how plenty math is going into activity programming? in basic terms evaluate determining no count if a undeniable attack hits or no longer based on the point of the attacker, the point of the defender, the armor of the defender, the form of weapon, etc. (What do you push right into a calculator to try this?!) verify out my 2 links, one on Feistel ciphers and one on hashing applications. those are the two issues that are very usually utilized in programming. Feistel ciphers are used for issues like shelter internet servers and hashing is used to index strings. tell me there no math needed to understand those suggestions.
I want to learn programming/computer science but....?
Hi Depending on what you are interested in you can take a look at w3schools. There offers a variety of tutorials on html, html5, css, css3, javascript, sql, asp and such. However its more for web based applications. I had studied 3 years of computer science at the Pre- University level and 4 years pf computer engineering at the university. For programming, i started to learn the basics for java, before going on to the more advance polymorphism and finally the more advance enterprise application and window application development. After learning java for 1 semester, I was introduced to the visual basic, which i feel it is easier than java due to the GUI IDE which allow me to drag and drop and double clicks on controls and the methods to handle events are automatically generated. Of course these are emtpy methods which i need to fill in what to do. After that i was introduced to C programming. Which is truly a power language but not as easy to pick up compared to visual basic and java. Throughout my education, 7 years in fact, no one taught me about Javascript, very little on HTML and CSS. I was expected to learn on my own. In fact, you could start by exploring that too. HTML... To create a web page using notepad. 1) Create a new notepad and name it mypage.html or mypage.htm 2) Put the following in the file you created.
This is the page you created. Congrats! 3) Save the file and double click it to launch it in your default web browserCareer guidance!! Should i become a programmer?
Daniel, Firstly, if you're concerned about the economy, you should check out the estimates the Bureau of Labor Statistics provides on the 30 fastest growing professions. Software programming is a profession that is in demand and will continue to be for a while. Here's the link to the BLS: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/ecopro.t06.htm Secondly, you seem to be on the fence about choosing this profession. I feel if you have some interest in this profession, explore it. By that I mean, get an internship in software programming. If you can afford it, unpaid internships are a fantastic way of getting well-needed experience and will ultimately assist you in learning if this profession is right for you. Thirdly, are you attending a 4-year college/university? If so, you can switch your major if you find out you don't like this field. I hope this helps you. If ever you need more free career advice, find me here: http://www.nextstepscareer.com/forum.php Note: NSCS' Free Career Advice Forum is just getting under way, which means the team has tons of time to provide personal solutions :)!