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Studying Computer Science at Home?
Jack asks: "My fianceé would like to study computer science at home, with a view to becoming a software engineer. She is disabled, so it is hard for her to attend a course at an actual college or university. She completed high school, getting good qualifications in maths, but has no formal training in computer science, as yet. Can anyone recommend good home study courses for her? (We are in the UK)."
These are available for download, but consider sending them $75US for the complete set of 17 DVDs. A great deal.
I think when most people want to major in Computer Science they really just want Computer Programming
Then they should say so. They're not at all the same thing. Sure, if you get a "CS" degree at Bumfuck State U., you're probably not going to get much real computer science, but that just means you don't really have a CS background.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
The 4:00am question: I doubt it since she doesn't know how to program yet. But neither do I and I've written code for many many years now.
The A HA: Again I doubt it since she doesn't know how yet.
vi vs emacs: Just silly has nothing to do with programming.
typing fast: okay for one you have no idea what her disability is. she may not physically be able to type fast. no biggie - programming has very little to do with how fast you type - ask a typist to code your next project for you - see who gets done quicker her or you.
leafless tree: WTF?
clothes & closets: Again WTF? My closet is a mess. Why because I'm busy and have many many other things to do.
musical talent: Okay my music skills are bottom of the barrel, but many smart people do have good music skills, but many do not.
deep grasp: unless she studied it then nope.
collection of computers: nothing to do with being a good programmer.
newsgroups: probably not as she isn't into programming yet.
ask slashdot: many other ways to find answers to this question, like google.
In short don't be such a snob and narrow minded in your view of what a programmer is. You would be surprised if you saw the people I work with, and this ain't no back water its a major American university (We've got jocks (played football or basketball in College), Nerds (the typical - like your list), very Social (always knows everyone) and they are all very good.
Well, regardless of the fact that being a good programmer will help you in your CS pursuits, if she wants to develop software I would suggest not worrying about the language as much.
/. rhetoric, bombast, and bad-mouthing about coders who can't write/construct threaded GUI apps in assembly using nothing but a one-shot CLI typescript entry (editors are for wimps), there are plenty of high-level languages that allow people to build extremely useful and powerful software tools without having to know anything about bit-shifting or loop optimizations.
/.
Despite all of the
That said, I would direct her to learn about Data Structures, Object-oriented Analysis and Design. _Planning_ what to build will make MUCH more of a difference in developing software applications than coding style/fu ever will. Horribly planned development makes projects harder to write, harder to maintain, and, worse, harder to use. If a project is designed well, you can always go back and improve sections with better techniques (aha, instead of sorting these everytime for easier searching, I'll just hash them instead)... whatever.
The science part of comp sci should (hopefully) give you skills to improve design and power by applying abstract ideas to real code but honestly what most of CS will do is show you the questions you have to ask, how to ask them, whether they can be solved, and then how to try and solve them...
if she wants to make software, tell her to study design... any dumbass can code... and mouth-off on
dave