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If you stay with your current job and do not go to university, here are some concrete ideas for things that you might want to try, which I would recommend based on what you wrote:

* Learn C. I have heard good things about _Learn C The Hard Way_, which is free, though I have never used it myself. Since you want to know more "CS," work through _Introduction to Algorithms_, a pretty standard (second-semester) university text, in C (NOT a language than manages memory for you!).

http://c.learncodethehardway.org/

http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/introduction-algorithms

* Work through _The Elements of Computing Systems_ (aka "From NAND to Tetris"). The book is fun, and it introduces many topics that are more advanced than CRUD.

http://www.nand2tetris.org/

I have many other ideas, but I decided to stop here in order to emphasize those above. :)

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Thanks. I love C and I love assembly tutorials. I got through about half of K&R. I should see it all the way through. I also have the algorithm book but it's unopened. :o I have the desire it just feels like quite the mountain. Maybe I'm making it feel bigger by just not walking it? Or walking it alone. Thanks for your advice it reinforces my thinking.

You could watch the video lectures instead of or in addition to reading the algorithms book.

I've seen quite a few of these and thought they were ok:

http://videolectures.net/mit6046jf05_introduction_algorithms...

This one is newer though:

http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-comput...

I guess I would check out both and see which professors I like the best :)

I would highly recommend Harvard CS50. Everything is available on the course website, https://cs50.harvard.edu/ . There is a linux appliance with a console utility that allows you to submit problem set solutions for automated testing/grading.

The moment I knew it was a good choice for me was after I completed a problem set that required us to write sorting algorithms.

My prior experience was with Ruby and JS, so .sort() => done, no idea how this mysterious .sort() was returning my ordered set. After the lecture and writing the algorithms, I didn't just have the code as you would following a tutorial. I had a better understanding behind "the magic". I understood how to evaluate the performance of these algorithms using Big O notation and why my Google killing search engine won't do much Google killing if I use bubble-sort.

Give it a try. You'll get a good introduction to CS and write some cool programs, including a program that can recover "deleted" images from a memory card.

Good idea, I'd like to add that after you get some know the basics of C to pick up K&R and do the examples. Also go to the local city/uni library and pick up an old book on UNIX utilities (AWK,SED,GREP etc)

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