Comment by mattfrommars | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mattfrommars | Hacker News Reader

Does anyone know a good time in one's career to take time out and spend it on going through SICP and videos lectures with it?

I have a STEM (non-CS) degree but very recently, started working as a programmer. Doing my first internship at a 'techy' corporate company. One of the things I'd be doing on the side is to go through https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/elements-computing-systems. The video introduction to it just gives me goosebumps to this day. I don't know why. It's fascinating.

Than there is other paradigm books such as "pragmatic programmer", "Thinking Like A Programmer", "Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software", etc.

So far, I've done plenty of reading on Algorithm & Design Structure and leetcode here and there. In the past, I didn't qualify for internship at Google, Amazon or M$ as a software developer/engineer. I feel the reason why I didn't was because I didn't have a "computer science" keyword mentioned anywhere on my resume. Hence, my hope is after getting through "Element of Computing System" & Design Pattern, I'll be able to shove in "computer science" keyword one way or another on my resume.

> Does anyone know a good time in one's career to take time out and spend it on going through SICP and videos lectures with it?

I guess any time is good. It's generally a class you take as a freshman or sophomore. People who attend top engineering schools generally played around with these topics in high school or even in elementary school.

Also, it looks like MIT stopped teaching SICP.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11628080

> In the past, I didn't qualify for internship at Google, Amazon or M$ as a software developer/engineer. I feel the reason why I didn't was because I didn't have a "computer science" keyword mentioned anywhere on my resume.

Or you are competing against the best of the best CS students from around the world. People who aren't blown away by introductory stuff like elements of computing systems or who are just looking into SICP. I really don't think missing a keyword is why you didn't get the internship at google, amazon or microsoft.

> Hence, my hope is after getting through "Element of Computing System" & Design Pattern, I'll be able to shove in "computer science" keyword one way or another on my resume.

I've never had computer science on my resume though I majored in it. For my internships, I just listed the courses/projects I worked on. For my first job, I just listed the degrees I had ( BS and BA and the gpas for both ), along with the projects I worked on and the internships I had. After that, I just listed the university and degrees and my work experience. "Computer science" isn't something I ever listed in any resume. But then again, I was never really good at writing resumes.

I think you are really overthinking things but feel free to do what you want. If you are so intent on putting computer science on your resume, why not just major in computer science?

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