The Self Taught Computer Scientist

The follow-up to Cory Althoff's bestselling The Self-Taught Programmer, which inspired hundreds of thousands of professionals to learn to program outside of school! Fresh out of college and with just a year of self-study behind him, Cory Althoff was offered a dream first job as a software engineer for a well-known tech company, but he quickly found himself overwhelmed by the amount of things he needed to know, but hadn’t learned yet. This experience combined with his personal journey learning to program inspired his widely praised guide, The Self-Taught Programmer. Now Cory's back with another guide for the self-taught community of learners focusing on the foundations of computer science. The Self-Taught Computer Scientist introduces beginner and self-taught programmers to computer science fundamentals that are essential for success in programming and software engineering fields. Computer science is a massive subject that could cover an entire lifetime of learning. This book does not aim to cover everything you would learn about if you went to school to get a computer science degree. Instead, Cory's goal is to give you an introduction to some of the most important concepts in computer science that apply to a programming career. With a focus on data structures and algorithms, The Self-Taught Computer Scientist helps you fill gaps in your knowledge, prepare for a technical interview, feel knowledgeable and confident on the job, and ultimately, become a better programmer. Learn different algorithms including linear and binary search and test your knowledge with feedback loops Understand what a data structure is and study arrays, linked lists, stacks, queues, hash tables, binary trees, binary heaps, and graphs Prepare for technical interviews and feel comfortable working with more experienced colleagues Discover additional resources and tools to expand your skillset and continue your learning journey It's as simple as this: You have to study computer science if you want to become a successful programmer, and if you don't understand computer science, you won't get hired. Ready for a career in programming, coding, or software engineering and willing to embrace an "always be learning" mindset? The Self-Taught Computer Scientist is for you.

The follow-up to Cory Althoff's bestselling The Self-Taught Programmer, which inspired hundreds of thousands of professionals to learn to program outside of school! Fresh out of college and with just a year of self-study behind him, Cory Althoff was offered a dream first job as a software engineer for a well-known tech company, but he quickly found himself overwhelmed by the amount of things he needed to know, but hadn’t learned yet. This experience combined with his personal journey learning to program inspired his widely praised guide, The Self-Taught Programmer. Now Cory's back with another guide for the self-taught community of learners focusing on the foundations of computer science. The Self-Taught Computer Scientist introduces beginner and self-taught programmers to computer science fundamentals that are essential for success in programming and software engineering fields. Computer science is a massive subject that could cover an entire lifetime of learning. This book does not aim to cover everything you would learn about if you went to school to get a computer science degree. Instead, Cory's goal is to give you an introduction to some of the most important concepts in computer science that apply to a programming career. With a focus on data structures and algorithms, The Self-Taught Computer Scientist helps you fill gaps in your knowledge, prepare for a technical interview, feel knowledgeable and confident on the job, and ultimately, become a better programmer. Learn different algorithms including linear and binary search and test your knowledge with feedback loops Understand what a data structure is and study arrays, linked lists, stacks, queues, hash tables, binary trees, binary heaps, and graphs Prepare for technical interviews and feel comfortable working with more experienced colleagues Discover additional resources and tools to expand your skillset and continue your learning journey It's as simple as this: You have to study computer science if you want to become a successful programmer, and if you don't understand computer science, you won't get hired. Ready for a career in programming, coding, or software engineering and willing to embrace an "always be learning" mindset? The Self-Taught Computer Scientist is for you.

Sharpen your coding skills by exploring established computer science problems! Classic Computer Science Problems in Java challenges you with time-tested scenarios and algorithms. Summary Sharpen your coding skills by exploring established computer science problems! Classic Computer Science Problems in Java challenges you with time-tested scenarios and algorithms. You’ll work through a series of exercises based in computer science fundamentals that are designed to improve your software development abilities, improve your understanding of artificial intelligence, and even prepare you to ace an interview. As you work through examples in search, clustering, graphs, and more, you'll remember important things you've forgotten and discover classic solutions to your "new" problems! Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications. About the technology Whatever software development problem you’re facing, odds are someone has already uncovered a solution. This book collects the most useful solutions devised, guiding you through a variety of challenges and tried-and-true problem-solving techniques. The principles and algorithms presented here are guaranteed to save you countless hours in project after project. About the book Classic Computer Science Problems in Java is a master class in computer programming designed around 55 exercises that have been used in computer science classrooms for years. You’ll work through hands-on examples as you explore core algorithms, constraint problems, AI applications, and much more. What's inside Recursion, memoization, and bit manipulation Search, graph, and genetic algorithms Constraint-satisfaction problems K-means clustering, neural networks, and adversarial search About the reader For intermediate Java programmers. About the author David Kopec is an assistant professor of Computer Science and Innovation at Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont. Table of Contents 1 Small problems 2 Search problems 3 Constraint-satisfaction problems 4 Graph problems 5 Genetic algorithms 6 K-means clustering 7 Fairly simple neural networks 8 Adversarial search 9 Miscellaneous problems 10 Interview with Brian Goetz

You know how to code..but is it enough? Do you feel left out when other programmers talk about asymptotic bounds? Have you failed a job interview because you don't know computer science? The author, a senior developer at a major software company with a PhD in computer science, takes you through what you would have learned while earning a four-year computer science degree. Volume one covers the most frequently referenced topics, including algorithms and data structures, graphs, problem-solving techniques, and complexity theory. When you finish this book, you'll have the tools you need to hold your own with people who have - or expect you to have - a computer science degree.

This book is suitable for use in a university-level first course in computing (CS1), as well as the increasingly popular course known as CS0. It is difficult for many students to master basic concepts in computer science and programming. A large portion of the confusion can be blamed on the complexity of the tools and materials that are traditionally used to teach CS1 and CS2. This textbook was written with a single overarching goal: to present the core concepts of computer science as simply as possible without being simplistic.

'One of the best software design books of all time' - BookAuthority Cory Althoff is a self-taught programmer. After a year of self-study, he learned to program well enough to land a job as a software engineer II at eBay. But once he got there, he realised he was severely under-prepared. He was overwhelmed by the amount of things he needed to know but hadn't learned. His journey learning to program, and his experience in first software engineering job were the inspiration for this book. This book is not just about learning to program, although you will learn to code. If you want to program professionally, it is not enough to learn to code; that is why, in addition to helping you learn to program, Althoff also cover the rest of the things you need to know to program professionally that classes and books don't teach you. The Self-taught Programmer is a roadmap, a guide to take you from writing your first Python program to passing your first technical interview. The book is divided into five sections: 1. Learn to program in Python 3 and build your first program. 2. Learn object-oriented programming and create a powerful Python program to get you hooked. 3. Learn to use tools like Git, Bash and regular expressions. Then use your new coding skills to build a web scraper. 4. Study computer science fundamentals like data structures and algorithms. 5. Finish with best coding practices, tips for working with a team and advice on landing a programming job. You can learn to program professionally. The path is there. Will you take it? From the author I spent one year writing The Self-Taught Programmer. It was an exciting and rewarding experience. I treated my book like a software project. After I finished writing it, I created a program to pick out all of the code examples from the book and execute them in Python to make sure all 300+ examples worked properly. Then I wrote software to add line numbers and color to every code example. Finally, I had a group of 200 new programmers 'beta read' the book to identify poorly explained concepts and look for any errors my program missed. I hope you learn as much reading my book as I did writing it. Best of luck with your programming!

Starting an application is simple enough, whether you use migrations, a model-synchronizer or good old-fashioned hand-rolled SQL. A year from now, however, when your app has grown and you're trying to measure what's happened... the story can quickly change when data is overwhelming you and you need to make sense of what's been accumulating. Learning how PostgreSQL works is just one aspect of working with data. PostgreSQL is there to enable, enhance and extend what you do as a developer/DBA. And just like any tool in your toolbox, it can help you create crap, slice off some fingers, or help you be the superstar that you are.That's the perspective of A Curious Moon - data is the truth, data is your friend, data is your business. The tools you use (namely PostgreSQL) are simply there to safeguard your treasure and help you understand what it's telling you.But what does it mean to be "data-minded"? How do you even get started? These are good questions and ones I struggled with when outlining this book. I quickly realized that the only way you could truly understand the power and necessity of solid databsae design was to live the life of a new DBA... thrown into the fire like we all were at some point...Meet Dee Yan, our fictional intern at Red:4 Aerospace. She's just been handed the keys to a massive set of data, straight from Saturn, and she has to load it up, evaluate it and then analyze it for a critical project. She knows that PostgreSQL exists... but that's about it.Much more than a tutorial, this book has a narrative element to it a bit like The Martian, where you get to know Dee and the problems she faces as a new developer/DBA... and how she solves them.The truth is in the data...