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Comment by amock | Hacker News Reader

Does he want to study computer science or software engineering? If he wants to study computer science he should take lots of math, particularly courses that involve proofs. I recommend algebra, graph theory, and combinatorics in particular. I'd recommend Haskell or SML as programming languages since they have so much theory behind them. Haskell has a great community and is really nice to use, but SML is simpler to start with and has a concise definition.

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http://homepages.cwi.nl/~jve/HR/

Jan van Eijck's »The Haskell Road to Logic, Maths and Programming« does exactly that: it introduces you to mathematical proofs, basic logic issues (including relations) and programming using Haskell. I'd wholeheartedly recommend it to someone who's not yet had much contact to maths.

Erm.... this is all well and good, but is this really something you'd want to start a 14 year old out with?

How is 14 early to take courses on graph theory or combinatorics, or learn SML? He sounds like a bright kid, or else he wouldn't be asking his cousin how to study computer science. He might or might not actually be interested in these things, but if he's interested in them, then he should learn them.

I think if a kid wants to learn something is asking about it, then there should be a way. I think instead of starting straight with high school Math, he/she can be started with some basic stuff of upcoming classes.

This is what I would have liked when I was 14. I was more interested in the theory but most introductory material was just about writing software.

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