Ask HN: Books or courses to learn computer programming? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Books or courses to learn computer programming?

3 pointscurious164 comments

Please guide me towards good resources that will really pay off in the future in my skill building. Currently I am a high school graduate. I am interested in learning computer programming and computer science.

I have searched online for self study resources. I have searched university public course webpages. Almost all introductory programming materials I have seen seem to be just teaching the syntax of a favourite hot programming language and asking students to do exercises using the newest taught syntactical feature of the language. I doubt they teach how to actually solve problems or design solutions in a language agnostic way. I want to learn programming in such a way like you learn touch typing. Like it becoming a second nature. All I am saying is I want transferrable skills (foundational principles?) that once learnt can be applied to any new programming language I pick up.

My ultimate aim is to be able to program complex systems in any programming language (that the project demands) in a well structured manner. Rather than worrying about the syntax, my worry should lie how I should utilise the system resources at hand, and model my problem and solution in that manner that the system is most efficient.

I prefer books, but if there are online courses that can help me I am more than happy to look into those.

Can you please suggest some resources along these lines?

I think you want to start as a junior SUPPORT for an in house development you admire or is willing to pay you.

After you know how to SUPPORT their awesome product you learn their stack. When you can demonstrate competence in their stack you talk them into promoting you to CODE SUPPORT, which means you now bug hunt and attempt a patch for the tickets you were once creating.

After a year of code support you will achieve: * that samurai coding ethos you look for (competent in and out, fix and move on). * intimate knowledge of the in house stack * demonstrated competence

After this you move to FEATURE development

After this when a new infrastructure choice comes up, you volunteer and make a compelling comparative case. Some day, yours will be chosen and you may work your way up to that leet coder exaltation you seek.

Meanwhile, choose a side(s)!

Python, JavaScript (TypeScript?), Rust, Go, etc.

It’s like vi and emacs, one will just “feel right to you” and there will be a market for that.

This is excellent advice. You can (and should) program on your own at home, but support is where you learn your chops in tech. It's like how they make pilots fly the small regional planes before they get to tackle the 777.

I also agree with getting good at debugging before you take on massive feature development. This is because finding and preventing bugs before they ship will be more than half of your work as a feature developer.

I can wholeheartedly recommend two books:

1. How to Design Programs : https://htdp.org/

2. A Data-Centric Introduction to Computing : https://dcic-world.org/

Usually I say the best introductory programming class is Harvard's CS50 (available online for free through EdX). What's good is they don't just focus on one language, but keep switching languages as the weeks roll along. That gives you not just programming experience, but that crucial insight that languages have more in common than their differences. (And it also tries to touch on most of the major constructs -- linked lists, sorting algorithms, recursive loops.) It's slogan is "challenging, but definitely do-able" -- which I think is one of its biggest strengths. It's fun, but it also gives you some of the actual excitement of real-world programming -- and it exposes you to things that are excellent jumping off points for further study.

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