If you're looking for a shortcut, read Peter Norvig's "Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years".
1) Time is important, there's ageism in tech and you need to plan your career wisely - no one is going to do it for you. The best way to learn is to get hired ASAP and get professional experience.
2) College degree is very important. In this market, people are struggling to get jobs with experience & degrees. You just have much less likelier chance of success without a degree. This appears all the time, even actual prodigies like George Hotz are overcompensating and always appear eager to prove that they have the fundamentals down like a CS grad.
3) Moving fast into building things which generate hype is the best course of action for young people
I know a friend that got to interview stage with a FAANG they told him the position was for university degree holders. This is an old essay and I'd always take with a grain of salt what people say versus how the reality is. It's very easy to get wrong advice that's no longer applicable.
I know someone who did something very similar (but in math) and jumped into a grad math program at age 17.
Reading TAOCP is the least efficient way to learn about algorithms. Just because something is harder doesn't mean it's better. Can't even put TAOCP in resume without appearing cringe.
>I know someone who did something very similar (but in math) and jumped into a grad math program at age 17.
Can you share more about this, even IMO medalists go to undergrad first.
"Learning the algorithms" isn't a binary checkbox. It's a gradient of thinking and math skills, ranging up to a researcher in the field. TAOCP is the only book I know if that will give you that depth.
Learning those skills is not for everyone, but can be extremely valuable, and open a lot more doors than graduating with a class of 10,000 other CS students.
> Can you share more about this, even IMO medalists go to undergrad first.
He was an "undergrad" whose first math class was graduate real analysis.
Which would you think they'd choose?
>He was an "undergrad" whose first math class was graduate real analysis.
This is unlikely, he'd still have to pass undergrad Math exams. I'd wager there are plenty of those for a 4 year degree.
> but can be extremely valuable, and open a lot more doors than graduating with a class of 10,000 other CS students.
You need to convince the hiring manager that the skills are extremely valuable. No one is going to take the word for it. Deep theoretical CS doesn't always translate to industry success. The flaw in your reasoning is that you'd try to impress some hardcore CS guy from super-duper company with TAOCP. But they already get 10s of thousands of applications. It won't even get the resume read without a BsC. All the companies which talk like broken records that they don't care about degrees, actually do care about them a *lot* and in your first intro call they'd ask about it if you even get that far.
Keep in mind during interview you have to implement the algorithm fast in a common language Java, C++ or Python. Just being theoretical about it isn't enough.