Ask HN: Books or other resources for someone starting a computer science degree

1 points by goochtek 11 years ago | 3 comments

I'm in my mid 30s at the moment and have been a programmer for a long time. I finally decided to take a break and get some formal education. I've been accepted in to a university to study towards a bachelor of computer science.

What I want to know is if there are any books or good resources online that can give me a leg up towards things like the math or Java programming etc that are covered in a computer science degree.

Also, I have the option to choose a general degree or mathetics and statistics or software engineering. Would it really matter on a resume which major I chose?

stingraycharles 11 years ago |

I cannot really help you with good book suggestions (there are just too many, and it really depends on what your course will actually look like), but to me it sounds like you're a more practical, pragmatic programmer. In that case, I would definitely opt-in for a a software engineering degree: a lot of people who graduate CS know everything about algorithms etc, but have no clue on how to manage to build a large software application; they have no real experience with project management, etc.

Those are the types of things you will learn in a software engineering degree.

Other than that, I can tell that many, many people in software engineering get statistics wrong (because it's so incredibly counter-intuitive at times), so anyone who would have a degree in statistics on his resume would get points from me.

goochtek 11 years ago | |

Thank you for your reply.

You are right in that I am a more practical, pragmatic programmer. I do have experience building enterprise applications and project management which is great, but I am lacking in the algorithm side. This is part of the reason why I am pursuing the degree.

Ultimately, I would ultimately like to do something with robotics/machine learning. I have a real passion for automation. I would love to work at a place like Amazon and help build the future of automated distribution. The algorithm side of things would tie all my skills together.

I will talk to the university about their statistics side of things of this course. I will see if I can get a full course outline and go from there. Would be more of a challenge, but worth it in the end.

Thank you again for your reply.

stingraycharles 11 years ago | | |

Robotics and machine learning are two entirely different beasts. If you want to go into machine learning, definitely opt-in for the statistics side. Machine learning is arguably more about statistics than about AI.