> # Teach Yourself Computer Science
>
>
>
> If you’re a self-taught engineer or bootcamp grad, you owe it to yourself to learn computer science. Thankfully, you can give yourself a world-class CS education without investing years and a small fortune in a degree program 💸.
>
> There are plenty of resources out there, but some are better than others. You don’t need yet another “200+ Free Online Courses” listicle. You need answers to these questions:
>
> - Which subjects should you learn, and why?
> - What is the best book or video lecture series for each subject?
>
> This guide is our attempt to definitively answer these questions.
>
> ## TL;DR:
>
> Study all nine subjects below, in roughly the presented order, using either the suggested textbook or video lecture series, but ideally both. Aim for 100-200 hours of study of each topic, then revist favorites throughout your career 🚀.
>
>
>
>
>
> Subject Why study? Best book Best videos Programming Don’t be the person who “never quite understood” something like recursion. Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs Brian Harvey’s Berkeley CS 61A Computer Architecture If you don’t have a solid mental model of how a computer actually works, all of your higher-level abstractions will be brittle. Computer Organization and Design Berkeley CS 61C Algorithms and Data Structures If you don’t know how to use ubiquitous data structures like stacks, queues, trees, and graphs, you won’t be able to solve hard problems. The Algorithm Design Manual Steven Skiena’s lectures Math for CS CS is basically a runaway branch of applied math, so learning math will give you a competitive advantage. Mathematics for Computer Science Tom Leighton’s MIT 6.042J Operating Systems Most of the code you write is run by an operating system, so you should know how those interact. Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces Berkeley CS 162 Computer Networking The Internet turned out to be a big deal: understand how it works to unlock its full potential. Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach Stanford CS 144 Databases Data is at the heart of most significant programs, but few understand how database systems actually work. Readings in Database Systems Joe Hellerstein’s Berkeley CS 186 Languages and Compilers If you understand how languages and compilers actually work, you’ll write better code and learn new languages more easily. Compilers: Principles, Techniques and Tools Alex Aiken’s course on Lagunita Distributed Systems These days, most systems are distributed systems. Distributed Systems, 3rd Edition by Maarten van Steen 🤷‍
>
> ## Why learn computer science?
>
> There are 2 types of software engineer: those who understand computer science well enough to do challenging, innovative work, and those who just get by because they’re familiar with a few high level tools.
>
> Both call themselves software engineers, and both tend to earn similar salaries in their early careers. But Type 1 engineers grow in to more fullfilling and well-remunerated work over time, whether that’s valuable commercial work or breakthrough open-source projects, technical leadership or high-quality individual contributions.
>
>
>
> Type 1 engineers find ways to learn computer science in depth, whether through conventional means or by relentlessly learning throughout their careers. Type 2 engineers typically stay at the surface, learning specific tools and technologies rather than their underlying foundations, only picking up new skills when the winds of technical fashion change.
>
> Currently, the number of people entering the industry is rapidly increasing, while the number of CS grads is essentially static. This oversupply of Type 2 engineers is starting to reduce their employment opportunities and keep them out of the industry’s more fulfilling work. Whether you’re striving to become a Type 1 engineer or simply looking for more job security, learning computer science is the only reliable path.
>
>
>
>
>
> ## Subject guides
>
> ### Programming
>
> Most undergraduate CS programs start with an “introduction” to computer programming. The best versions of these courses cater not just to novices, but also to those who missed beneficial concepts and programming models while first learning to code.
>
> Our standard recommendation for this content is the classic Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, which is available online for free both as a book, and as a set of MIT video lectures. While those lectures are great, our video suggestion is actually Brian Harvey’s SICP lectures (for the 61A course at Berkeley) instead. These are more refined and better targeted at new students than are the MIT lectures.
>
> We recommend working through at least the first three chapters of SICP and doing the exercises. For additional practice, work through a set of small programming problems like those on exercism.
>
> For those who find SICP too challenging, we recommend How to Design Programs. For those who find it too easy, we recommend Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming.
>
>
>
> [Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs](https://teachyourselfcs.com//sicp.jpg)
>
>
>
> ### Computer Architecture
>
> Computer Architecture—sometimes called “computer systems” or “computer organization”—is an important first look at computing below the surface of software. In our experience, it’s the most neglected area among self-taught software engineers.
>
> The Elements of Computing Systems, also known as “Nand2Tetris” is an ambitious book attempting to give you a cohesive understanding of how everything in a computer works. Each chapter involves building a small piece of the overall system, from writing elementary logic gates in HDL, through a CPU and assembler, all the way to an application the size of a Tetris game.
>
> We recommend reading through the first six chapters of the book and completing the associated projects. This will develop your understanding of the relationship between the architecture of the machine and the software that runs on it.
>
> The first half of the book (and all of its projects), are available for free from the Nand2Tetris website. It’s also available as a Coursera course with accompanying videos.
>
> In seeking simplicity and cohesiveness, Nand2Tetris trades off depth. In particular, two very important concepts in modern computer architectures are pipelining and memory hierarchy, but both are mostly absent from the text.
>
> Once you feel comfortable with the content of Nand2Tetris, our next suggestion is Patterson and Hennesy’s Computer Organization and Design, an excellent and now classic text. Not every section in the book is essential; we suggest following Berkeley’s CS61C course “Great Ideas in Computer Architecture” for specific readings. The lecture notes and labs are available online, and past lectures are on the Internet Archive.
>
>
>
>
>
> ### Algorithms and Data Structures
>
> We agree with decades of common wisdom that familiarity with common algorithms and data structures is one of the most empowering aspects of a computer science education. This is also a great place to train one’s general problem-solving abilities, which will pay off in every other area of study.
>
> There are hundreds of books available, but our favorite is The Algorithm Design Manual by Steven Skiena. He clearly loves this stuff and can’t wait to help you understand it. This is a refreshing change, in our opinion, from the more commonly recommended Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest & Stein, or Sedgewick books. These last two texts tend to be too proof-heavy for those learning the material primarily to help them solve problems.
>

> (continues in next comment)

I'm a software dev with 9 years experience, and even I have difficulty finding work. I live in Colorado as well. My qualifications are impeccable. But I still get "no's" for absolutely no technical reason.

My best advice? Work on your resume wording, and your interview people skills. Use active words on your resume, like "initiated", "spear-headed", "lead", "started", "identified". Words that scream out "I'm a leader". It doesn't matter if you have no desire to go into management. The more your resume reads as "I'm a self-starter, I'm a leader, and I'm ALWAYS learning", the better your chances.

Sadly skills alone are becoming more and more ubiquitous. There are scores of self-taught developers out there that dilute the market for people with actual degrees. Budgets being what they are, if a company needs JUST a code monkey, they're going to hire the cheap one. Your degree actually puts you at a slight disadvantage in that arena.

However, if they're looking for a long-term (i.e. quality) person, they're going to hire someone who has NOT ONLY the technical qualifications, but also fits the "perfect employee" model that they have envisioned. This means: pleasant to be around, good customer / people skills, confident (but not cocky), positive attitude. You know, the stuff an HR person would care about. Sit up straight. Make eye contact. Smile. Firm handshakes. Dress well (not too nice though, developers get a bit edgy around folks in suits). Address people by their name. Do not curse. Do not be overly familiar. Do not volunteer too much information (especially things like health conditions and personal quirks). You're interviewing with human beings, who are vulnerable to "gut feelings", "first impressions", and other vague means of evaluating a candidate. Give them every reason to have a good "gut feeling" about you.

This is important: do research about the company before you come in. If you come in, sit down, and act confused about what their business even does, they're going to think you don't care. Find out what the company does, find out what products they make, what their business model is, etc. Find out (if you can) what the employee atmosphere is like. Do everything you can to show that you actually really WANT to work there. This also means attaching a custom cover to your resume, and showing a similar amount of attention to detail that screams, "hey I did this JUST FOR YOU".

As for the technical qualifications, your degree just says "I can be taught". Nothing more. A company who sees a candidate with a degree and a small amount of experience WILL expect you to work for a rather modest paycheck. You CAN scare them off by throwing out a number that's too big. Research the company you're looking at. Use sites like glass-door to find out what level 1 (or similar) engineers are paid. If you can't find information on the company's pay, find a similar-sized company in the same industry. Try to get a realistic idea of what to expect, salary-wise. You can PM me and ask what I made at my very first "real" job after getting a degree.

Also make sure you have a LinkedIn profile. It's surprising how many recruiters hang out on there, just doing searches for keywords, contacting everyone who pops up.

I know you're having a hard time right now, and I know it can be VERY discouraging hearing "no" after "no" (or the classic, "we've decided to proceed with another candidate" line). ALL IT TAKES IS ONE YES. You might be one interview away, but you won't know unless you keep trying. YOU CAN DO THIS. I know it's a lot to keep track of. I know it's a ton of stuff to remember. And I know putting on a brave face especially in the face of financial uncertainty is all but impossible.

I'm not a big believer in positive thinking. But neither am I a big believer in negative thinking. Your post comes across as being incredibly pessimistic and defeatist. While I understand that this is your reality (and please know that this IS a safe place to vent), you need to make absolutely CERTAIN that you leave that attitude at the door when you're interviewing. You're interviewing with people who can and will pick up on that if you're not careful. And like I said, sometimes all it takes is that "unpleasant gut feeling" to cost you the job. Don't give them ammo.

One more word about technical qualifications. Smaller companies put a big emphasis on experience. But larger companies know that experience is cheap, and that what really matters is that you understand the fundamentals. Make sure you understand the fundamentals. This means data structures and algorithms mostly. If it's in your budget to do so, pick up a copy of The Algorithm Design Manual. Once you have a good grasp on the concepts in that book, most white-board coding exercises become much easier. Also, make sure there's (at least) one language you understand REALLY well. Whether that's javascript, or Python, or C, or Perl, or PHP, or Java, or... doesn't matter. Just make sure you have one language that you can actually code competently in.

I know you said you can't move. I live in Colorado Springs. Not sure if that's considered a "move" for you. I work at a DoD company that currently has a number of openings for Java developers, and Javascript frontend developers. It's a modest-sized company (600 people, ish). Your Asthma won't phase them at all (though frankly you really shouldn't ever bring up health issues in an interview). If you're interested, PM me and I'll give you the company name and a few tips about what they're looking for.

If you're interested I can also take a look at your resume and let you know if I see anything that could use some improvement / modification. I know it's really hard to get feedback about resumes. I'm not a hiring manager, but I've spent years perfecting my own, so I like to think I know a thing or two on that subject.

Best of luck.

TL;DR: Just read it. Sorry.

EDIT

I just want to also throw in that I agree with /u/akhbhaat about the gap on your resume. That's not an insurmountable problem, and some companies would still hire you. But, in the words of Ricky Ricardo: "you got some 'splainin' to do". It's not a deal breaker, but it does raise eyebrows. Unemployment can become self-perpetuating because companies assume you're not good enough to be employed. It's bullshit, of course, but it IS now up to you to either take corrective action (go back to school), or come up with a really good excuse as mentioned.

EDIT 2

I also agree with all of the comments about side-projects. Side-projects are a way of showing a company, "I may not have been employed, but I was still actively developing my skills". It also kinda gives them the idea that you're passionate about the field, which is an extremely good impression to give.

Sites like Project Euler and Topcoder might provide a good starting ground to just get you warmed up a bit. Also you may want to consider registering on Stackoverflow and answer some of the questions you know the answers to (don't worry about reputation on there, no one cares). But if you really want to impress them, go start or contribute to an open source project. Doesn't matter what. Doesn't matter what language. As long as it's challenging to YOU and actually teaches you something.

You have a long journey ahead of you, but here goes :D

Beginner

C++ Primer: One of the better introductory books.

The C++ Standard Template Library: A Tutorial and Reference: Goes over the standard template library in fantastic detail, a must if you're going to be spending a lot of time writing C++.

The C++ Programming Language: Now that you have a good idea of how C++ is used, it's time to go over it again. TCPPL is written by the language's creator and is intended as an introductory book for experienced programmers. That said I think it's best read once you're already comfortable with the language so that you can full appreciate his nuggets of wisdom.


Intermediate

Modern C++ Design: Covers how to write reusable C++ code and common design patterns. You can definitely have started game programming by the time you read this book, however it's definitely something you should have on your reading list.

C++ Templates: Touches on some similar material as Modern C++ Design, but will help you get to grips with C++ Template programming and how to write reusable code.

Effective C++: Practical advise about C++ do's and dont's. Again, this isn't mandatory knowledge for gamedev, but it's advice is definitely invaluable.

Design Patterns: Teaches you commonly used design patterns. Especially useful if you're working as part of a team as it gives you a common set of names for design patterns.

Advanced

C++ Concurrency in Action: Don't be put off by the fact I've put this as an "advanced" topic, it's more that you will get more benefit out of knowing the other subjects first. Concurrency in C++11 is pretty easy and this book is a fantastic guide for learning how its done.

Graphics Programming

OpenGL: A surprisingly well written specification in that it's pretty easy to understand! While it's probably not the best resource for learning OpenGL, it's definitely worth looking at. [edit: Mix it in with Open.gl and arcsynthesis's tutorials for practical examples and you're off to a good start!]

OpenGL Superbible: The OpenGL superbible is one of the best ways to learn modern OpenGL. Sadly this isn't saying much, in fact the only other book appears to be the "Orange Book", however my sources indicate that is terrible. So you're just going to have suck it up and learn from the OGL Superbible![edit: in retrospect, just stick to free tutorials I've linked above. You'll learn more from them, and be less confused by what is 3rd party code supplied by the book. Substitute the "rendering" techniques you would learn from a 3d book with a good 3d math book and realtime rendering (links below)]


Essential Mathematics for Game Programmers or 3D Math Primer for Graphics and Game Development: 3D programming involves a lot of math, these books cover topics that OpenGL/DirectX books tend to rush over.

Realtime Rendering: A graphics library independent explanation of a number of modern graphical techniques, very useful with teaching you inventive ways to use your newly found 3d graphical talents!

I've posted this before but I'll repost it here:

Now in terms of the question that you ask in the title - this is what I recommend:

Job Interview Prep

1. Cracking the Coding Interview: 189 Programming Questions and Solutions
   
2. Programming Interviews Exposed: Coding Your Way Through the Interview
   
3. Introduction to Algorithms
   
4. The Algorithm Design Manual
   
5. Effective Java
   
6. Concurrent Programming in Java™: Design Principles and Pattern
   
7. Modern Operating Systems
   
8. Programming Pearls
   
9. Discrete Mathematics for Computer Scientists
   
   

   Junior Software Engineer Reading List
   

   
   

   Read This First
   

   
   

10. Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware
    
    

    Fundementals
    

    
    

11. Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction
    
12. Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art
    
13. Software Engineering: A Practitioner's Approach
    
14. Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code
    
15. Coder to Developer: Tools and Strategies for Delivering Your Software
    
16. Perfect Software: And Other Illusions about Testing
    
17. Getting Real: The Smarter, Faster, Easier Way to Build a Successful Web Application
    
    

    Understanding Professional Software Environments
    

    
    

18. Agile Software Development: The Cooperative Game
    
19. Software Project Survival Guide
    
20. The Best Software Writing I: Selected and Introduced by Joel Spolsky
    
21. Debugging the Development Process: Practical Strategies for Staying Focused, Hitting Ship Dates, and Building Solid Teams
    
22. Rapid Development: Taming Wild Software Schedules
    
23. Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams
    
    

    Mentality
    

    
    

24. Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency
    
25. Against Method
    
26. The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development
    
    

    History
    

    
    

27. The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering
    
28. Computing Calamities: Lessons Learned from Products, Projects, and Companies That Failed
    
29. The Deadline: A Novel About Project Management
    
    

    Mid Level Software Engineer Reading List
    

    
    

    Read This First
    

    
    

30. Personal Development for Smart People: The Conscious Pursuit of Personal Growth
    
    

    Fundementals
    

    
    

31. The Clean Coder: A Code of Conduct for Professional Programmers
    
32. Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship
    
33. Solid Code
    
34. Code Craft: The Practice of Writing Excellent Code
    
35. Software Craftsmanship: The New Imperative
    
36. Writing Solid Code
    
    

    Software Design
    

    
    

37. Head First Design Patterns: A Brain-Friendly Guide
    
38. Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software
    
39. Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software
    
40. Domain-Driven Design Distilled
    
41. Design Patterns Explained: A New Perspective on Object-Oriented Design
    
42. Design Patterns in C# - Even though this is specific to C# the pattern can be used in any OO language.
    
43. Refactoring to Patterns
    
    

    Software Engineering Skill Sets
    

    
    

44. Building Microservices: Designing Fine-Grained Systems
    
45. Software Factories: Assembling Applications with Patterns, Models, Frameworks, and Tools
    
46. NoEstimates: How To Measure Project Progress Without Estimating
    
47. Object-Oriented Software Construction
    
48. The Art of Software Testing
    
49. Release It!: Design and Deploy Production-Ready Software
    
50. Working Effectively with Legacy Code
    
51. Test Driven Development: By Example
    
    

    Databases
    

    
    

52. Database System Concepts
    
53. Database Management Systems
    
54. Foundation for Object / Relational Databases: The Third Manifesto
    
55. Refactoring Databases: Evolutionary Database Design
    
56. Data Access Patterns: Database Interactions in Object-Oriented Applications
    
    

    User Experience
    

    
    

57. Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability
    
58. The Design of Everyday Things
    
59. Programming Collective Intelligence: Building Smart Web 2.0 Applications
    
60. User Interface Design for Programmers
    
61. GUI Bloopers 2.0: Common User Interface Design Don'ts and Dos
    
    

    Mentality
    

    
    

62. The Productive Programmer
    
63. Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change
    
64. Coders at Work: Reflections on the Craft of Programming
    
65. Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering
    
    

    History
    

    
    

66. Dreaming in Code: Two Dozen Programmers, Three Years, 4,732 Bugs, and One Quest for Transcendent Software
    
67. New Turning Omnibus: 66 Excursions in Computer Science
    
68. Hacker's Delight
    
69. The Alchemist
    
70. Masterminds of Programming: Conversations with the Creators of Major Programming Languages
    
71. The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood
    
    

    Specialist Skills
    

    
    In spite of the fact that many of these won't apply to your specific job I still recommend reading them for the insight, they'll give you into programming language and technology design.
    
    

72. Peter Norton's Assembly Language Book for the IBM PC
    
73. Expert C Programming: Deep C Secrets
    
74. Enough Rope to Shoot Yourself in the Foot: Rules for C and C++ Programming
    
75. The C++ Programming Language
    
76. Effective C++: 55 Specific Ways to Improve Your Programs and Designs
    
77. More Effective C++: 35 New Ways to Improve Your Programs and Designs
    
78. More Effective C#: 50 Specific Ways to Improve Your C#
    
79. CLR via C#
    
80. Mr. Bunny's Big Cup o' Java
    
81. Thinking in Java
    
82. JUnit in Action
    
83. Functional Programming in Scala
    
84. The Art of Prolog: Advanced Programming Techniques
    
85. The Craft of Prolog
    
86. Programming Perl: Unmatched Power for Text Processing and Scripting
    
87. Dive into Python 3
    
88. why's (poignant) guide to Ruby

I got my start by taking AP CS in high school. However, I had already gone to college and that was a while ago, so I read some books on the commute to/from work.

Initially, I read Sams Teach Yourself PHP, Mysql and Apache all in one to learn PHP.

Immediately afterward, I read Murach's Java Se 6 and Beginning Java Objects to learn Java.

Most recently, I read a portion of C++ Primer Plus, but got very sick of it. I've read most of Accelerated C++

I have a few other books on C# to read when the time comes to actually write code.

By the time I had read all of the above, I felt pretty confident on how to structure a program, regardless of language. As such, I was able to pick up Python and JavaScript quite easily just by reading online documentation at Python.org and W3Schools. When I'm writing a web app, I'll rely pretty heavily on PHP's and MySQL's online documentation to help me with whatever syntax quibbles I may have.

I still want to read Game Coding Complete and I'll probably want to find a few resources on programming within XCode.

They all tend to follow the same programming paradigms, to be honest. Java did a good job in getting me into an OOP mindset and C/C++ did a good job at helping me think about how to program things without layer of abstraction. Once I learned these concepts, it was pretty easy to get started with a new language. Programming in PHP can be super sloppy, but taking what I learned from other languages, I'm usually able to write fairly clean code in PHP (especially when I learned how to use classes).

I wouldn't recommend all of the books above, to be honest. I didn't have much ability to do online training at the time and compiled lists of books weren't nearly as useful at the time, so I relied mostly on Amazon book reviews. I'm sure you can find a few choice books on each language you want to learn and go that way. If you were to read books, I think Accelerated C++ is a good book, but works best if you already have some experience programming. I remember like Beginning Java Objects more than Murach's, though both are great as references (which is why they're both still in my bookshelf). C++ Primer Plus spends too much time teaching C and not enough time teaching C++ (you spend pages upon pages learning about C-style strings, aka char arrays, rather than just using the String Class, but I digress).

Ultimately, I could read a bunch about a language, but I never truly learned the language until I started writing in it. I've written a handful of programs just as proofs of concepts and I recommend you do the same while learning any language.

You can dive right into Objective C, I was only vaguely familiar with C and I've published a few apps without any problems. However, if you're intent on learning C pick up 'The C Programming Language' (K&R), not only the best C programming book, but one of the best programming books ever written.

Objective C books, I recommend one of the two or both books,
'Programming in Objective C 3rd edition' or
'Objective C: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide'

Both of these books are excellent resources for learning and I keep them close by whenever I have a question.

In terms of learning iOS development. I recommend going into iTunes U and downloading the latest Stanford University iPhone development course. I believe Winter 10 is the newest, follow along those classes and the class website, treat it like a real class, do the homework and all the assignments. There is no text book for the class, but this other book by Big Nerd Ranch, 'iOS Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Way' is totally awesome.

After these classes and books you should have a great foundation for iOS development. Once you feel comfortable with everything and have an app or two under your belt, download Madison Technical College's Advanced iPhone Development course videos from iTunes U and Apple's own WWDC Session Videos.

Each MTC video is about 3 hours, watch them in chunks. The professor, Brad Larson is one of the best iPhone developers out there and in my opinion is one the best contributors to the community, (see his posts on stack overflow).

Lastly, check out www.raywenderlich.com. My personal favorite iPhone development website. It's updated every Monday, Wednesday, Friday with great technical tutorials that are funny and educational.

Best of luck to you and welcome to iOS development :-D.

Lots of great suggestions here. My grad program used SPSS but it annoyed me that someone had to pay for it, so I learned R. Like others mention, if you learn R it can be easier to go back to SPSS. Also, others who use SPSS might think you have some kind of superpower.

Like u/bobbyfiend says, the best is to do use it on some projects. This forces you to learn something that is important and you have interest in solving. The internet is amazing, and most answers in some form or another can be found on Stack Overflow (make sure to ask the questions in the proper format and search first), /r/rstats (a bit more friendly than stack overflow), or on some of the email lists.

In general, I would say there are a couple of resources that most people could benefit from as they start to learn:

-Andy Field's Discovering Statistics with R - It does have some irreverent humor, but is a good read

-Hadley Wickham's R for Data Science - this resource is free online but can also be bought through Amazon. Hadley is a R celebrity responsible for creating the 'tidyverse' series of packages - packages which make R more beginner friendly imo.

You will definitely want to look at your subspecialty and see if there are any people working in R there. They may have some other resources. Again, you can read books and watch courses all you want, but it is critical to practice (and practice using something you are interested in can help exceptionally). Ultimately, I used my dissertation as an excuse to dive into R - there was pain, and I probably could have done it quicker if I stayed in SPSS - but I learned a lot and now use R and Rmarkdown - and really do not think I plan on going back. Another user mentions looking at others' code, and this has also helped me to make my code more efficient and reproducible - a big strength of R (love that you can use Git).

((EDIT)) I was assuming, for some reason (don't ask me why), that you couldn't do what /u/kulseran told you to do (i.e. having a function in the other file, and calling that function passing stuf as a parameter), but if you can stick to what he said, do it. It's the simpler/better/... solution. It often won't be able possible however. ((/EDIT))

Sorry the long post.

It is right: if you had another module that needed the contents of stuff, then you'd need something more sophisticated. Some options in C would be through the use of ADTs and mutable modules. In C++ you have way more options. I'm going to assume C though.

You can look at your code and find out which problem is the use of stuff solving. Factor that solution into a coherent (possibly mutable) module and hide stuff in there by making it a file scope static variable. Access to stuff is now done through its module's public interface. If access to it includes mutable operations, then you can control that mutation because it only happens through the module's public interface (only functions defined in that same file/module can access stuff). Ideally, this removes its globalness.

Of course that if this module provide functions like setStuff, getStuff, getPointerToStuff and/or related operations, the module separation is as good as nothing. The idea is to create an useful boundary that allows you good enough control over how stuff is used while providing a useful and encapsulating set of operations that users of your module can use. If those includes getState, then fine, but if it starts including all that other stuff, then you're effectively back to globals.

And just to be clear, the term "mutable module" is something I just came up with. It just means a module whose state can change.

The ADT approach is pretty common. Maybe there is a type struggling to come out of your use of stuff. Analyze your program and find out. Check which set of operations people are interested in doing to stuff. Voilá, there is your ADT. Now implement it. Hide it's internal state and have it be controlled through the ADT's operations.

There is a book on this. For all I know, it's good but it has been a while since I've looked at it => http://www.amazon.com/Interfaces-Implementations-Techniques-Creating-Reusable/dp/0201498413.

I think it's good to notice that the solutions C easily supports don't seem very good to me. You surely can solve the problem, but it won't be that convenient. There will be workarounds. C isn't particularly known for its ability to create great abstractions.

The overall notion is that state itself is not your enemy. However, it's often that we use mutable state. That is SOMETHING is in a state and the state of SOMETHING can change and become another one. Besides, often we'd like to share SOMETHING. That is, several modules in your program want to use SOMETHING. These two needs are in conflict with each other. That's where lies the evil because it's too error prone to share mutable state. If it's mutable, avoid sharing. If it's shared, avoid mutable.

That's the advantage of placing something inside a module, hiding it behind an ADT's implementation and so forth. Because it minimizes the sharing of that state. Now only a handful of functions share that state, which means that errors due to sharing [the module's particular internal] mutable state are limited to that particular piece of code.

As for the java code...

Notice how you use public static final variables. These have state and are shared, but aren't mutable. So they just don't have all the usual pain of globals (although they're not the ultimate perfect feature). The private state of an object is mutable, but sharing is contained to the object, and thus they also don't have all the pain of globals. You can control this private state through the object's public interface, much like you can do through the stateful object and the ADT implementation.

I'm sorry but I just scanned through the beginning of your java code. I didn't look much into it.

I have a several friends who find Test-driven Development to be really helpful for shaping their ideas into code. In general you'll need to break down the problem into smaller pieces, and TDD can help not only in realizing what those pieces need to be, but it also provides a method of ensuring that your code has accomplished what you want.

One of my favorite lessons from this sub is that complexity should stem from the coupling of simple parts. This isn't always straightforward. Many times it's easy to create a monolithic myProject.c, a single struct, or only a handful of functions to get the result you want. This isn't, strictly speaking, wrong but it is generally seen as bad practice. This is because when you have to maintain long term projects you want to have changes to one portion affect the others as little as possible; you should never have to rewrite the whole program in order to accommodate a change to a single part.

There aren't exactly hard and fast rules to determine the best process for modular design, but practicing on smaller projects is a good start. If you're looking for more specific "best practices" I've found C Interfaces and Implementations by David Hanson to be a really nice guide for some particularly common problems.

As for your specific project I think it would help you to consider the mechanics of TicTacToe as a game, and how you can change them while still keeping it familiar. For instance, my first thoughts are:

• grid size: 3x3 is standard, but a larger grid could change how the game plays out without changing win conditions.
  
  
• player number: 1v1 is standard, but having 3+ player free-for-all matches or teams could make it completely different.
  
  Now what I'm getting at here is that for the purposes of learning best practice it could help to design the program to allow for different rules, changing individual parts without it requiring a complete overhaul. If you can build it to change these things without recompilation so much the better. In general I look at this method as an analogous measure of scalability; can the program handle an increased load, how much of one, and how readily will it handle it. In allowing for modular rule changes you'll build a modular project.
  
  As a final note, bear in mind that there is a limit to modularity. Eventually trying to make a program handle every eventuality can be paralyzing. Learning where the limit is and what you feel you can handle is almost purely a matter of experience, but I think the most important thing is to never let the scale of your project deter you from completing it. You control how the program is designed so ultimately it's your decision, and if that means just sitting down and writing out something that works so be it. The perfect is the enemy of the good.
  
  I hope that helps.

Depending on what you want to learn:

PYTHON SPECIFIC

You mentioned building websites, so check out the flask mega tutorial. It might be a bit early to take on a project like this after only a month, but you've got time and learning-by-doing is good. This'll teach you to build a twitter clone using python, so you'll see databases, project structure, user logons etc. Plus he's got a book version, which contains much of the same info, but is good for when you can't be at a computer.

The python cookbook is fantastic for getting things done; gives short solutions to common problems / tasks. (How do I read lines from a csv file? How do I parse a file that's too big to fit in memory? How do I create a simple TCP server?). Solutions are concise and readable so you don't have to wade through loads of irrelevant stuff.

A little while down the road if you feel like going deep, fluent python will give you a deeper understanding of python than many people you'll encounter at Uni when you're out.

WEB DEV

If you want to go more into web dev, you'll also need to know some HTML, CSS and Javascript. Duckett's books don't go too in depth, but they're beautiful, a nice introduction, and a handy reference. Once you've got some JS, Secrets of the javascript ninja will give you a real appreciation of the deeper aspects of JS.

MACHINE LEARNING
In one of your comments you mentioned machine learning.

These aren't language specific programming books, and this isn't my specialty, but:

Fundamentals of Machine Learning for Predictive data analytics is a great introduction to the entire process, based upon CRISP-DM. Not much of a maths background required. This was the textbook used for my uni's first data analytics module. Highly recommended.

If you like you some maths, Flach will give you a stronger theoretical understanding, but personally I'd leave that until later.

Good luck and keep busy; you've got plenty to learn!

If you want a serious book recommendation: Learning Python 5th Edition by Mark Lutz. It's a monster at 1600 pages but to say it's thorough is an understatement. I got the ebook so I can quickly search through it on my phone. Even though I wouldn't consider myself a beginner anymore, I find between this book and the Python Cookbook I find answers to most of my problems (unless they're related to a library).

You can also read Learn Python the Hard Way (my introduction to Python 2). Which is free but not anywhere near the scale of Learning Python. As a warning, there's some coarse language used in it.

If you don't know any Python -- and this will probably stir the pot a little -- learn Python 3. BUT learn how to make it Python 2 compatible. Sure, you'll give up things like advanced tuple unpacking and yield from (to name two off the top of my head) and you'll probably have to use six but when the day comes that you can fully move your library to just Python 3, you'll be thankful.

If you feel comfortable enough with Python to begin approaching a web framework, I would personally recommend Flask. I'm sure quite a few people would disagree and they probably make valid points. But Flask is easy to start with:

from flask import Flask

app = Flask(name)

@app.route('/')
def index():
return "Hello World"

if name == 'main':
app.run()

Miguel Grinberg (you'll see him float around /r/Flask and some of the other Python subs occasionally) has both a great blog series and a great book on building Flask projects. It's not the end all be all of Flask knowledge and honestly, I'd like see more written on working with bigger projects, but given Flask is only 4 years old I'm not surprised.

For Django, I've heard lots of good things about Two Scoops of Django but I've not read it (though, I need to at some point).

I'm unsure about other frameworks like Pyramid or TurboGears or WebPy.

You'll also want to have working knowledge of HTML (not hard), CSS and Javascript (much harder). And getting chummy with libraries like Bootstrap and JQuery/Angular/whatever is probably a good idea, too.

There's also specific concepts you'll want to be familiar with depending on where and what you work on: things like REST, JSON, Ajax, CSRF, etc.

I'm from a social science background and, like you, I often find myself hopelessly lost when it comes to what feels like very basic concepts in statistics. I think that's partly due to how statistics is taught in all non-mathematics disciplines - in theory we're taught how to use and evaluate quite complex statistical procedures, but with only 1-2 hours per week teaching, it's impossible for our lecturers to cover the fundamental building blocks that help us to understand what's actually going on.

Because of this, I've recently started a few MOOCs on Coursera, and I've found these massively helpful for covering research methods and statistics in far more depth than my undergraduate and postgraduate lecturers ever had time to delve into. In particular, a couple of courses I'd recommend are:

• Methods and Statistics in Social Sciences - This is particularly focused on quantitative methods in the social sciences (including quite a bit on behavioural and self-report research) so I'm not sure if it will be directly relevant with respect to neuroimaging and cognitive neuroscience, but this gives a great introduction to research methods in general. I've actually only done the first course in this series (Quantitative Research Methods), but they're very comprehensive and well made, so I'm confident that the whole series will be useful for any researcher.
  
• Probability and statistics: To p or not to p? - This one is a little bit more maths-heavy so might be a bit intimidating if you don't find that sort of material easy, but it's a good introduction to some of the core concepts in quantitative research, including some you mentioned (e.g. probability distributions). You don't really have to fully engage with or grasp the maths for it to be useful either.
  
  In terms of textbooks, I personally use Andy Field's Discovering Statistics Using R, and find that very helpful. Field is a psychologist who is very open about his difficulties with learning statistics, and I've found it quite useful and re-assuring to learn from someone with that mindset. He's also tried writing a statistics textbook in the form of a graphic novel, An Adventure in Statistics: The Reality Enigma, so if that sounds like something that might help you, check it out.
  
  I think a few people from a 'purer' statistics background are a bit more critical about Field's books because they're not as comprehensive as a book written by, for example, a statistics professor - and there might be some advice in there that's a little bit out-of-date or not quite correct. He also has a very hit-and-miss cheesy sense of humour, which you'll either love or find very annoying. But I think he takes the right sort of approach for helping people who aren't necessarily mathematically-inclined to dip their toes into the world of statistics.

My own opinion is that it doesn't matter so much what books you use, especially with Google available to answer questions and provide supplementary examples. Some might be a bit clearer or a bit less, but you're going to get to the same place if you keep writing code and practicing those skills regardless of what you're reading.

If I wanted to learn to program in a given language these days, I'd probably just Google for "<language> tutorial" and start going...maybe bounce among a couple until I find one that's clear. The books I learned C and C++ with were written decades ago and are probably out-of-print.

I'm very dubious that college is the most effective way to learn a language. My experience with college classes is that a class will teach you general concepts, and you more-or-less pick up the language yourself (you'd need to to get the assignments done). Computer science courses will teach you things that are nice to know, like time analysis, but they aren't necessarily the best way to get someone up and running and writing code. I personally think that people tend to do better when they get to explore the things that they're unclear on. The professor might lead you to some important concepts that you might miss, but you don't need college classes to pick up programming, and I'd encourage people not to wait for said classes and hope that they just transform them into a programmer.

Note also that there are a lot of ways to program in C++, and these produce very different-looking programs.

• It can basically be used as C with an extra feature or two (a string class...back in the day, const...and using iostreams).
  
  
• It can be used in an OO fashion, where new and delete show up.
  
  
• It can be used in the currently-popular OO approach, with Boost and ideally no pointers showing up anywhere.
  
  Throw in templates and the STL showing up or not showing up, and you've got a fair number of "languages" that fall under "C++".
  
  My only recommendation is the one I use for trying to learn any new subject that I want to know well: get at least two books or sources on the subject and go through them one after the other, since you'll probably get a better idea of the material after having seen it in two different lights (and if one description of a particular point isn't clear, you have a second one to bounce to).
  
  There is one difference among books that I would say is meaningful, and that's that some books combine teaching C++ and learning to program and others deal just with C++ as a language and are intended for programmers (sometimes programmers that already know the language). If you want specific book recommendations, you might want to give a sort of idea of what background you're coming from (e.g. do you program at all yet?), because the sort of thing that, say, a junior C++ programmer would use to brush up on his C++ is a bit different from what I think would probably make a good "introduction to C++ for non-programmers" text.
  
  The last "brush-up" book I bought was Stroustrop's The C++ Programming Language, which taught me that I didn't know the language as well as I thought I had. This is probably behind-the-times enough now that something else is better for brush-up. If you want a "beginning programming" book, looking for something that has "learn" and "c++" in the title is probably a good heuristic.

I am actually going to try to be helpful, in stark contrast to the rest of the comments. You actually want to learn two things C++ and the C++ STL, because the STL is the way to actually get work done with C++ these days.

The vast majority of my college classes were in C++, so I have read several computer science textbooks aimed at C++. The least bad of all the ones I have personally used was Understanding Program Design and Data Structures with C++ by Lambert and Naps. It is the textbook that My Introduction to Computer Science I class used back in the day. It is a serviceable into to computer science book; if you new to computer science it isn't too bad, if you are familiar with comp sci then the book should all be trivial but a good way to learn the language. It is kind of old but the basics of computer science haven't really changed since the 1970's anyway so it doesn't matter [Amazon link]. Lambert and Naps seems to have a newer C++ book out, I don't know anything about it; if it is a newer edition or a different approach or what [Amazon link]. The nice thing about the older one is I can vouch that it is okay, and you can get it really cheap used through Amazon.

Bjarne Stroustroup is the original creator of C++. His book, The C++ Programming Language, is a very good and very thorough overview of the language. Be warned though, it reads like a dense college textbook, mostly because it is a dense college textbook [Amazon link].

The other really essential one is The C++ Standard Template Library by Plauger. Stepanov, et al.; Stepanov is the creator of the STL [Amazon link].

My favorite STL book is actually The C++ Standard Template Library: A Tutorial and Referenceby Josuttis. It is a lot more readable [Amazon link].

Remember, the STL is there to be used, and it hasn't sucked since the late 90's, so don't go around making your own string classes and stack classes, except when you are playing around to learn C++.

Also the Boost libraries are really good now too, but it didn't really exist when I was doing C++, so I don't have any idea what is a good book for that.

Good luck! I just gave you about a year's worth of reading material, but at the end you will be a well-qualified C++ newbie.

The correct answer to:

Q. Should I learn C or C++ first?

Is:

A. Yes.

WARNING: Highly Opinionated Analysis of C vs C++

I see a lot of people recommending one way but no one offering an analysis of BOTH the Pro's & Con's.

I've been using C++ since ~1990. I've briefly worked on a PS3 C++ compiler when I worked for Sony. I've seen 2 major problems over the years with C++ programmers:

1. People don't exercise discipline and restraint in K.I.S.S.

They use (and abuse) every language feature because they can. There is this tendency to over-engineer even the simplest things. Take a look at this complete clusterfuck of CRC in the Boost library.

1109 lines of over-engineered C++ crap for a simple CRC32 function instead of a mere 25 lines of code!?!?! The C version would:

• do the same thing,
  
• be simpler to write, and
  
• be simpler to debug, and
  
• more importantly solve the problem at hand, not abstracted to the point of being over-engineered.
  
  The trade-off would be is that it is less flexible, but WHEN was the last time you needed to use a custom CRC polynomial!?!? One would instead use a different algorithm such as MD5, SHA, etc. that:
  
  
• has better better error-rate detection,
  
• less collisions,
  
• is multi-core.
  
  This excellent SO on hashing is but one example of focusing on the big picture.
  
  2. People lack a basic understanding of the cost let alone the implementation of C++ expressions.
  
  I've seen people stick a virtual function inside an inner loop and wonder why their performance is crap. I've seen people fail to grasp a basic understanding of pointers. I've seen people not understand memory management and how to guarantee zero memory leaks. I've seen people spend more time on writing an "über" template and waste hours debugging that instead of just writing something in 1/10 of the time and move on.
  
  IMO, due to the bloated, over-excessive verbose nature of C++ it is for these reason that I strongly recommend a beginner learn C first and then learn C++. You'll have a better understanding of why C++ is designed the way it is, what the design trade-offs are/were, what C++ hacks are, and how to best use the languages to their potential.
  
  However, this is ignoring the benefits and disadvantages of the Pro's/Con's of why one would learn C++ or C first.
  
  

  Learn C++ first
  

  
  

• C++ Pro
  
• C++ really is a better C then C in so many ways, too numerous to enumerate
  
• In the ways it is worse the smart people / companies use a sub-set of the language: Ubisoft avoid Templates, Exception Handling, and Run-Time Type Identification. When even a C++ committee member admits he writes in a sub-set of C++ himself you know the language is b-l-o-a-t-e-d.
  
• You won't have to unlearn certain "bad habits" of C
  
• Your skills will up-to-date
  
• Your code will be textually smaller (See note about Con)
  
• Job Security -- that is half joking, half serious. Seriously.
  
• You can enjoy the time exploring the different nooks and crannies of the language. You will see a different way to solve the same old problems. This can be both good and bad.
  
• Eventually you'll be able to enjoy deep technical C++ comedy such as Hitler on C++
  
• OOP (Object Orientated Programming) makes it almost easy to quickly write bigger scale programs
  
• Is multi-paradigm: Procedural, OOP, Functional, Generic. You have the freedom to pick and choose the parts of the language that fits your needs.
  
• For every problem you're trying to solve there is probably language support. Threads, and Atomics are finally part of the language.
  
  
• C++ Con
  
• You won't understand some of the C idioms used in practice
  
• The language is HUGE -- it will take you a decade to properly learn the language
  
• Debugging C++ is a PITA
  
• While people write crap code in any language, it is harder to read bad C++ code then C code.
  
• Compiler Support for the latest standards is a constantly moving target. Translation: Microsoft's Visual C++ has traditionally had crap support for the latest C and C++ standards. The good news is that MSVC 2015 finally supports a nice section of the language.
  
• While C++ can be textually smaller, one's code can easily be "bloated" if not careful (such as templates and partial template specialization)
  
• You really won't understand the run-time costs, nor be motivated to understand the underlying assembly language generated, by a "simple" C++ expression.
  
• Expect L-O-N-G compile times for any significant code base unless you use a "Bulk / Unity" build (you compile one .cpp file that includes EVERYTHING)
  
• It will be hard to resist over-engineering, over-complicating even the most basic tasks
  
• iostreams is a complete clusterfuck. Even the C++ committee recognizes there are many problems with C++ iostreams but sadly nothing is being done towards performance at the cost of type safety.
  
• It is far easier to blow your cache. Even Bjarne Stroustrup, the language designer, until 2012 didn't have a clue in understanding why Doubly Linked Lists were so slow compared to Arrays. HINT: The L1 Cache usage is critical for performance sensitive code.
  
• People tend to over-use the OOP paradigm even when they shouldn't. People make dogma and religion of "Design Patterns", failing to think if the model applies or not.
  
• The OOP paradigm is slow and bloated compared to Data-Orientated-Design. See Sony's Pitfalls of Object Orientated Programming
  
• Reflection STILL isn't standardized -- everyone has their own "home grown" approach. Maybe in C++17 ?
  
  
  

  Learn C first
  

  
  

• C Pro
  
• The language is tiny and easy to learn. Learn C the Hard Way is a great tutorial.
  
• No operator overloading
  
• No function overloading
  
• No lambas
  
• Has no reflection
  
• Has no exceptions
  
• Has no RTTI (Run-Time Type Identification)
  
• Has no STL (Standard Template Library)
  
• You will have a better understanding of the run-time "cost" or performance of code instead of a single line hiding "hidden" behaviour.
  
• You'll be a better programmer for understanding more of the lower-level implementation. If you don't know how to write itoa() or atoi() you're a noob programmer.
  
• You'll be forced to keep things simple
  
• You'll understand how to implement OOP in a non-OOP-native language, and better appreciate C++'s syntax sugar of OOP.
  
• You'll appreciate how C++ templates solve some but not all "textual replacement" problems and why #define macro's suck for debugging.
  
• Is ubiquitous, runs everywhere, and easy to get a C compiler for everything under the sun. Matz's Ruby Interpreter (MRI) was written in C, the Java VM was originally implemented in C, Perl is implemented in C, Linux is written in C. Anything popular and older then 10 years was probably written in C.
  
• Variables must be placed at top of a brace {
  
  
• C Con
  
• Compared to C++, you'll hate how primitive the language is such as typedefs for structs, no local functions, const is only "half" useful in C -- it can't be used in array declarations (See: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5248571/is-there-const-in-c ), etc.
  
• No operator overloading
  
• No function overloading
  
• No lambas
  
• Has no reflection
  
• Has no exceptions
  
• Has no RTTI (Run-Time Type Identification)
  
• Has no STL (Standard Template Library)
  
• Simple algorithms can be tedious to write
  
• Variables must be placed at top of a brace {
  
  With that said there are numerous C++ books I would recommend to ALL C++ programmers. They are sorted from beginner to expert:
  
  
• The Design and Evolution of C++, Bjarne Stroustrup -- another ancient but fundamental to understanding all the kludges in C++
  
• The C++ Programming Language, 4th Edition <-- "Mandatory"
  
• ALL the books by Scott Meyer
  
• Effective Modern C++: 42 Specific Ways to Improve Your Use of C++11 and C++14
  
• Effective C++: 55 Specific Ways to Improve Your Programs and Designs (3rd Edition)
  
• Effective STL: 50 Specific Ways to Improve Your Use of the Standard Template Library -- ancient but good
  
• Modern C++ Design: Generic Programming and Design Patterns Applied by Andrei Alexandrescu -- another ancient but it blew the doors open for C++ Meta-Programming. IT is interesting that he hates C++ -- he now works on the D language.
  
  If you can get only one book, get the The C++ Programming Language.
  
  Even though Bruce's book is ancient he keeps it simple and is a fun easy read. Remember this is before C++98 where the language is much simpler.
  
  
• Thinking in C++, Bruce Eckel
  
  You can find it online for free
  
  Lastly, just because you can, doesn't imply you should. Use balanced C++ and you'll be fine.

For some definitions:

REST

For a beginner like yourself, you can think of REST as meaning "pretty urls". It means much more than this, in the sense that RESTful urls encodes application state and interactions into the URL, but for your purposes, it is helpful to simplify REST down to "pretty urls". Reddit uses RESTful urls:

• https://www.reddit.com/r/learnprogramming/comments/4l0qch/super_confused_on_how_to_start_learning_web/
  
  The non-RESTful (RESTless?) url would look something like:
  
  
• https://www.reddit.com/comments.html?subreddit=learnprogramming&threadId=4l0qch&title=super+confused+on+how+to+start+learning+web
  
  MVC
  
  MVC means "model-view-controller", which refers to a specific way in which your application is organized in order to separate your domain layer (model), presentation layer (view), and business logic layer (controller). For a concrete example:
  
  Model: represents the data elements that you want to show to the user. A model is most often just a vanilla class with get/set properties. Let's imagine I'm building a blog from scratch and I want to show the user a page containing my post: my model logically includes my post (content, date, authors), comments (content, date, authors), etc. My model might look something like this:
  
  public class BlogPostModel
  {
  public Author[] Authors { get; set; }
  public DateTime CreatedOn { get; set; }
  public string Title { get; set; }
  public string Body { get; set; }
  public string[] Tags { get; set; }
  public Comment[] Comments { get; set; }
  }
  
  View: a view transforms the model into something your users can see and understand. In web development, a "view" is nearly always the HTML:
  
  <html>
  <head><title>@(Model.Title)</title></head>
  <body>
  <h1>@(Model.Title)</title>
  <div>By @(Model.Authors) on @(Model.CreatedOn.ToString("YYYY-mm-dd"))
  <div>
  @foreach(var tag in Model.Tags)
  {
  <a href="blog/tags/@(tag)">@(tag)</a>
  }
  </div>
  <div>@Model.Content</title>
  <h2>Comments</h2>
  @foreach(var comment in Model.Comments)
  {
  <div>. . .</div>
  }
  </body>
  </html>
  
  Controller: a controller contains your business logic. Typically, this includes logging users in, reading/writing to the database, validating user input on the server side. In ASP.NET MVC, your controller is a class which inherits from System.Web.Mvc.Controller. The controller class can exposes "actions", which are simply methods that return a type of ActionResult. ASP.NET will expose each "action" through a RESTful url called a "route". A simple controller looks like this:
  
  public class BlogController : Controller
  {
  // url: ~/blog/Article/{articleId}
  public ActionResult Article(int articleId)
  {
  // ...
  }
  
  // url: ~/blog/AddComment/{articleId}
  public ActionResult AddComment(int articleId, CommentModel model)
  {
  // ...
  }
  }
  
  ASP.NET
  
  ASP.NET is a set of classes and libraries built on top of the .NET Framework which helps you build web application. ASP.NET comes in two flavors:
  
  
• ASP.NET WebForms. You can simply ignore this. No one uses WebForms anymore.
  
• ASP.NET MVC. Learn this. This is a framework which makes it easy to write RESTful applications in the traditional model-view-controller fashion.
  
  WebAPI
  
  WebAPI allows you build RESTful web services that do not have a front-end (that is, calling methods on your API does not return any HTML). This can be occasionally useful.
  
  .NET
  
  The .NET framework is a set of libraries developed by Microsoft which helps developers build applications that execute in the Microsoft Common Language Runtime. If use C# on Windows, you already use .NET.
  
  Mono is alternative, open-source implementation of the .NET framework which runs on Linux.
  
  jQuery
  
  jQuery is a Javascript framework which is tailored to selecting and manipulating the DOM on the client side. (The "DOM" refers to the browsers representation of HTML elements on screen; changing an element on the DOM usually has a visible effect to the user in the browser.) It also has some useful utility methods for sending AJAX requests, animating elements on screen, etc.
  
  Although jQuery is omnipresent in web development, it's not a prerequisite for a beginner to learn. You can pick it up over time as you develop your skills.
  
  > I understand HTML, CSS, JavaScript, SQL, C# basics. What is the next step?
  
  Pick up a copy of Pro ASP.NET MVC 5 and start learning.

Geez, man. Thanks for making me feel old! :P

This subredding is actually a good resource to keep up on what's new. Twitter is another one if you follow the right people. Paul Irish, Addy Osmani, John Resig and a few others.

In terms of training, pluralsight is a GREAT resource. It's not free, but you can get an introductory offer and the low end monthly plan is $30 which isn't too bad. They have courses on web dev and programming by some of the best people in the industry. It's a great way to learn. http://pluralsight.com/training

Online learning:

• Codecademy
  
• Code School This is a paid site. But they have a few free coures. (Their free rails course is REALLY good).
  
  A few books you should read:
  
  
• JavaScript: The Good Parts
  
• Effective JavaScript
  
• Clean Code
  
  Podcasts:
  
  
• JavaScript Jabber
  
• Ruby Rogues
  
  Make sure you learn Git and the Chrome Dev Tools. Code School has a great course on it
  http://www.codeschool.com/courses/discover-devtools
  
  I'm sure I'm missing stuff, but this should be enough to get the ball rolling. Enjoy!
  

/u/TameNaken42 posts a good list. CODE, Code Complete, Pragmatic Programmer, Clean Code all get mentioned frequently.

I'll give you a couple of antiques for something different.

Kernighan and Plauger's The Elements of Programming Style

Someone on /r/learnprogramming suggested Kernighan's newerish book The Practice of Programming after I listed this. Another good one.

Both focus on how to program rather than teaching you a language. The Elements of Style was used in my Freshman intro to CS class.

Kernighan is the K of K&R, the guys behind The C Programing Language in case the name didn't register. Great writer.

Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgement to Calculation - Joseph Weizenbaum

I've got to say this one changed my life. Weizenbaum was an MIT AI researcher. He dusted of a simple chatbot (one of the first, perhaps) called Eliza in the late sixties. Weizenbaum was shocked by how people responded to the program.

> ELIZA's creator, Weizenbaum regarded the program as a method to show the superficiality of communication between man and machine, but was surprised by the number of individuals who attributed human-like feelings to the computer program, including Weizenbaum’s secretary.[2] Many academics believed that the program would be able to positively influence the lives of many people, particularly those suffering from psychological issues and that it could aid doctors working on such patients’ treatment.[2][4] While ELIZA was capable of engaging in discourse, ELIZA could not converse with true understanding.[5] However, many early users were convinced of ELIZA’s intelligence and understanding, despite Weizenbaum’s insistence to the contrary

He penned Computer Power in response. It's a great (easy) read and is a fascinating look at the very early stages of AI. It's interesting to note both how far and how little the field has advanced.

Anyway, this book was the text for my Computer ethics class when it was hot off the press and set the tone for how I approach software and engineering in general. We bear a responsibility for the things we create and should consider how we will impact the lives of the people using our creations.

A couple of favorite quotes:

> The computer programmer is a creator of universes for which he alone is the lawgiver. No playwright, no stage director, no emperor, however powerful, has ever exercised such absolute authority to arrange a stage or field of battle and to command such unswervingly dutiful actors or troops.

and

> Science promised man power. But, as so often happens when people are seduced by promises of power, the price is servitude and impotence. Power is nothing if it is not the power to choose.

Lol... so that was a load of text to recommend a couple of books. When you're not doing CS reading, be sure to read Terry Pratchett's Discworld series and Iain M Banks Culture series. Gotta give the head a vacation every now and then.

Sure! These are more relevant to chess though:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_chess

https://chessprogramming.wikispaces.com/

http://www.talkchess.com

http://www.chessprogramming.net

From a quick look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Go , it sounds like you need to be careful about attempting to apply chess techniques to Go (there's a section in the wiki page describing why). It sounds like your evaluation function would end up being very heavy, so if I were approaching this problem, I'd:

• Get to a reasonable level of Go skill myself (I'm a novice right now)
  
• Search around for useable information on the approaches others have taken
  
• Put a bit of time into experimentation with board representations that allow optimised evaluation
  
• Maybe take a peek at some low level computer graphic algorithms; the "life and death" problem sounds central to Go and seems superficially to have some relation to fills and other graphic techniques. Convex hull might be helpful, for instance, in evaluating isolated groups of stones.
  
• Likewise, graph theory might be helpful. It sounds like pattern recognition is a big factor, so understanding which stones relate to which others in a useful way could be modelled using something in this area maybe?
  
• Some folks seem to be having some success with neural nets, but unless you have background in that area, I'd avoid that initially; it's a very, very deep rathole... :o)
  
• Some of the bitboard tricks used in chess are going to be especially applicable. A great source for deep info on these is Hank Warren's excellent "Hacker's Delight":
  
  http://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Delight-Edition-Henry-Warren/dp/0321842685
  
  http://www.hackersdelight.org/
  
  This is essentially a cookbook of excellent low level bit twiddling tricks; these can massively speed up your code.
  
  It sounds like zobrist hashes and some kind of transposition table are going to be essential, so that automated testing I mentioned is going to be really important - these are both tricky parts to implement correctly. Alpha-beta, PV search and iterative deepening sound worthwhile in go.
  
  It does sound like it's all about the state representation for the evaluation function though. Definitely a meaty problem, good luck with it...!

Modern C++ (C++11 or later) books are not nearly as plentiful as those for Classic C++, but there are a few notables.

Bjarne's college text may be what you are looking for:

Programming: Principles and Practice Using C++ https://www.amazon.com/Programming-Principles-Practice-Using-2nd/dp/0321992784/ref=pd_sim_14_2/144-7765085-0122037

It is aimed at engineers, which makes it less general, but might be good for you.

Of course his general intro is also updated to C++11.

The C++ Programming Language https://www.amazon.com/C-Programming-Language-4th/dp/0321563840/ref=pd_sim_14_2/144-7765085-0122037

This is aimed at experienced systems programmers, so it may be a bit heavy for students, which makes the Primer (that you mentioned attractive).

C++ Primer https://www.amazon.com/Primer-5th-Stanley-B-Lippman/dp/0321714113/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_2/144-7765085-0122037

Be certain to get the 5th edition.

Of Scott's books only the latest is Modern.

Effective Modern C++ https://www.amazon.com/Effective-Modern-Specific-Ways-Improve/dp/1491903996/ref=pd_sim_14_2/144-7765085-0122037?_encoding=UTF8

This is less an introduction for students than for Journeymen (Journeypeople?) programmers.

For just plain good programming style consider Ivan's book.

Functional Programming in C++ https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1617293814

Don't be put off by "Functional." This style of programming will make your students excellent programmers.

There are some modern books of high quality that are niche.

The ultimate guide to templates:
C++ Templates https://www.amazon.com/C-Templates-Complete-Guide-2nd/dp/0321714121/ref=pd_sim_14_1/144-7765085-0122037

The ultimate guide to concurrency:
C++ Concurrency in Action https://www.amazon.com/C-Concurrency-Action-Anthony-Williams/dp/1617294691/ref=pd_sim_14_1/144-7765085-0122037

Some library options:

Despite its name, this is mostly reference. A very good reference.
The C++ Standard Library: A Tutorial and Reference (2nd Edition) https://www.amazon.com/Standard-Library-Tutorial-Reference-2nd/dp/0321623215/ref=pd_sim_14_2/144-7765085-0122037

Arthur's book covers C++17, which makes it one of the most modern on this list:
Mastering the C++17 STL: Make full use of the standard library components in C++17 https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-17-STL-standard-components-ebook/dp/B076CQ1RFF/ref=sr_1_fkmrnull_1

To what extent are you teaching C++ and to what extent are you teaching programing?

Good luck and have fun!

These are good, but I would say they're actually better for learning C++ rather than branching to higher level concepts. C++ is one of the easiest languages to implement best practices with and it's intuitive if you're a good programmer. The language and standard itself promotes cleverness and conciseness.

Some books I would suggest for branching to higher level C++ would be Effective C++ and More Effective C++.

Both are wonderfully written and relevant across standards. It focuses on bigger picture C++ rather than exactly current standards.

As the other posters have mentioned, I develop with Ruby as a day job doing web development on the Rails platform. That being said, I also used Ruby throughout college to do machine learning programs, genetic algorithms, and bioinformatics work. In general, Ruby's great for anything you want to just get done, without worrying about the contortions that some of the other explicitly focused languages put you through. Just having a REPL loop like IRB is great for very quickly trying things out.

That being said, Ruby is not good at any heavy computation. I don't care which version of Ruby it is, it's still slow for any heavy number crunching, so if you're going to be working with heavy datasets, it's best to pick your battles. As you've said you're just getting into programming, I would - rather than worry about if Ruby is the right language for you - just pick it up and learn with it. Certainly we aren't tied down to just using the bike on which we first learn to ride, and the same goes for languages.

If you have some *NIX / programming experience, I've heard great things about http://github.com/edgecase/ruby_koans

If you like to buy books, http://www.amazon.com/Ruby-Programming-Language-David-Flanagan/dp/0596516177 is the best and only Ruby book I'll bother owning. I have a short attention span (except when writing comments, apparently) and have found all other resources laud on and on about how great Ruby is, rather than tell you anything about it. Otherwise, they read like a dictionary. Not useful for me.

You've probably had it recommended, but if you like cartoon foxes, bacon, and a lot of comedic nonsense in your learning, check out http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant-guide/book/ - it's a quite fun way to get exposure to the language!

Ultimately the first steps are the hardest - and the best way to move forward is to set a goal. Perhaps write a program that takes a number n, and tells you what the _n_th prime number is. Certainly not the most exciting program, but something that can be improved on, etc etc.

1. I use IntelliJ at work and home, not just for Java but for a lot of other things, it has the fastest and best intelligent auto complete I have seen in an IDE and supports a whole tonne of frameworks and programming languages, it's also got some kickass keyboard shortcuts and a nice dark skin.
   However all the main IDEs are good, those are Eclipse, Netbeans and IntelliJ (as far as I am aware). At university you will probably be learning with Eclipse, BlueJ (which I have never used, but is supposed to be educational) or maybe even notepad. If they give you a choice I'd use Eclipse to learn with since it is used by a lot of companies and open source projects.
   
   
2. One thing to watch out for is String comparison using the == operator. The == operator in Java compares memory address and not content of the strings, a quick google search turns up this blog post with some details on Strings in Java. Basically you should use string1.equals(string2) when comparing strings in Java.
   
   
3. Nab a book from your university library or buy one on Amazon/The Book Depository.
   I taught myself it following various tutorials online but the books teach you better practices than those most of the time and are more in depth. Java a Beginners Guide seems highly rated on Amazon and has been kept up to date. When I was at university I saw a few copies of Thinking in Java around but it's a tad out of date now, Head First Java might also be worth a look.
   The videos I used to learn Java were a combination of thenewboston videos (these don't encourage good practices but show a basic way of getting started) and some Java games programming related videos by thecodinguniverse.
   Once you have the basics of Java down, might I also suggest completing the challenges on /r/dailyprogrammer to help get you more comfortable with it.

Oh I do lots of reading. My class are online, which seemed bogus to be at first because I had never tried online classes before, but Troy isn't one of those online-only colleges. I've had to do a lot of self teaching, and a lot of extra research to make sure I understand what I'm learning. Teaching yourself, I feel really enforces what you are learning, but at the same time you don't know how ridiculous your code actually looks from an experienced programmers point of view. I feel pretty confident in my understanding of OOP concepts so far because like I said I practiced and practiced the basics. I have C++ Primer Plus right now as a supplement for my Data Structures and Algorithms class. The classes I have left aren't really more advanced programming classes but just more introductory classes for other languages, and Software Engineering classes (no programming), so I'm trying to get started on getting really efficient in a language since I have the basics and some advanced concepts down. The hard part is just figuring out where to start. I really like C++, what concepts/ideas are introduced in Effective C++? I love learning anything new.

> Maybe now is a good time to step back and consider what kind of programming job you might want to target.

This is definitely something you should keep in mind. Try to become really awesome at one thing. That's not to say you shouldn't have a well rounded education in programming, just that someone who is simply ok at everything isn't getting a job anywhere.

Here are a few texts which I consider to be great for a novice programmer:

The C Programming Language : ANSI C

It's an older book, but it's still the best book to learn the language.

C++ Primer : C++

I used this book to get started with C++, and found it to be easy to follow and informative. Some say it's not a beginner book per-se, they may be right. I was already very familiar with C when I started.

Objective-C Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide : Objective-C

If you're planning to write apps for Apple's iOS and OS X platforms, you're definitely going to need to learn this. Otherwise, don't bother.

Algorithms : Algorithms / Data Structures

This is not the be and end all authority on algorithms, but it's a great book. It's less theoretical and more concrete in my opinion.

I don't feel qualified to give recommendations for other topics like Java or web development, as those aren't really my strong suits. Happy hunting!

I've really enjoyed Discovering Statistics using R by Andy Field. The book is written more like prose than a textbook, and is rarely dry. It requires you to learn how to use the R programming language as well, but I think it is very worth it. Everything he teaches, he teaches it at the conceptual level first and then shows you how to perform the tests using R. A great bonus is that R is great for data visualization, and being able to visualize large data sets quickly really helps get a better understanding of the data you are working with, which helps learn the theory.

Now this is an interesting and difficult question, which depends on many things. For starters, if you find this process frustrating that is unfortunate, because learning how to code is usually a trail and error + revise your work process. In other words, its supposed to be both frustrating and rewarding, like a hard (text-based) video game. For me its half of the fun.

What you want to learn really depends on the context. If you are really diving into econ, Stata is still very common. More stats-heavy, new, or interdisciplinary fields tend to use R. If you work with big, live datasets, or work with computer scientists, learning Python is always a plus. But obviously start with one.

I am proficient in stata simply because I had classes in it, it is difficult for me to advice how to self study. I learned most of the basics through An Introduction to Modern Econometrics Using Stata, and later on most of my R through R for Stata Users (Statistics and Computing) . I also learned some R through Discovering Statistics Using R, but I find Field obnoxiously failing to be funny, so I wouldn't reccomend it.

I'm now in the process of learning more Python, to do some more programming work on the side. As a start I used Learn Python 3 the Hard Way recommended to me by a very proficient friend of mine. This however does not give you much of an intro to stats in python, only the very very simple basics you can use as a vantage point for further work.

If you have learned the basics, tbe hest way to learn more is just to fool around. What is your field of interest? I like a lot of macro, so I used to just go to Quandl, pick some free databases, import them, and run some fun stuff. This is the best way to learn, especially if you for example try to merge free World bank databases with a different database from Quandl, as it will give you a lot of errors whilst merging and conversion problems later on.

If you are a bit more proficient you can start using websites like upwork to get some assignments. Usually it doesn't earn you much at the start, but the experience of actual assignments is the best way to self-teach. A different manner I like to do (if you are still studying) is offering your services (for free) to a professor. Ask him/her if there are still projects they are working on for which they need some to look at. Usually you will be treated solely as someone for the code, but it generally gives you a lot of experience and the right contacts.

These are just some of my thoughts. If you could provide some more context of where exactly you want to go, I could go into more detail.

Edit: What I forgot to say is that if it is not possible to study a course, I would recommend doing at least one MOOC to get you at a basic level.

I'm in the same boat as you. I'm currently working through a book called Java: A Beginner's Guide Sixth Edition. I chose this book because it uses the latest version of Java, which I think is important in some respects. Older books may have the same information initially (loops, datatypes, etc. rarely change), but as you delve deeper there are certain aspects of the language that improves over time and makes your life easier as a developer.

Choosing the right author is essential because they're basically your professor throughout the learning process. Someone suggested www.thenewboston.com and the vast majority of developers on this site laugh at even the mention of this resource. In other words, do your homework and ensure you're learning from a respected individual.

After having a basic understanding of a programming language your next step should be to choose a personal project slightly beyond the skill level you currently have. Doing research, solving problems/bugs and finishing something enhances your learning like you wouldn't believe. I've been reading programming books for many years and the times when I'd simply read a book in its entirety and then try to build something always showed me that my retention wasn't very strong. When I took the time to pause and use what I had learned throughout segments of the book I learned a lot more and my retention was extremely high.

Using what I've said above, you can pick pretty much any programming language and apply this learning style. I have tried both online classes and books and have found books to be the best method for myself. With online classes I've found myself spending time watching way too many videos than actually writing code.

What does he like in CS? Any hint would be helpful. Has he chosen a track (most schools let you choose an area of CS to specialize in, I was sysyems but we had theory, architecture, ai, and one or two others)?

Maybe a math clcok? There are a couple good ones but I think you can design your own and we could help you get better "numbers".

I got the first edition of this as a gift and was thrilled but its very low level (bit manipulation and assembly optimizations) so won't be for everyone (if you have heard him say something positive about C programming its probably a good choice if he loves ruby on rails maybe not).

Pick up this book for $15 and work through it.

http://www.amazon.com/Objective-C-Programming-Ranch-Guide-Guides/dp/0321706285

This book is written for complete beginners so that you will learn the C programming language on OS X, and then more specifically Objective-C so that you can begin programming for iOS and Mac OS X.

It'll guide you through everything from getting your development environment (Xcode) to creating your first programs. There's also an active forum community at BigNerdRanch if you run into problems, although all of us should be able to help you as well.

In my opinion, not only do you not need Windows, but developing anything in Windows is much more difficult than in OS X. OS X is based on UNIX, which is a big deal for programming, because it gives you access to the terminal and a nix filesystem (which is identical to Linux's – most programmers would suggest you use a Linux variant such as CentOS or Ubuntu, but to be honest Mac OS X is just as viable for programming as any Linux variant).

As far as getting started goes, it's always a good idea to learn the granddaddy of most languages: C, and one of its extensions (C++ or Objective C). After that you're free to learn whichever language you want. Python is a popular choice because it's very simple (and powerful!), but I wouldn't make it your first language if you're serious about programming. Python is almost too simple for its own good. You won't learn many of the common language conventions, which you would* learn if you learned C or Java.

There are a few free C textbooks online, but none are as beginner-friendly and OS X tailored as the one I linked above. As far as development environments go, on Mac OS X there are two important environments: Xcode, which is Apple's own development environment. It will allow you to program in C, Objective C, and NASM. And then there's Eclipse, which is a multi-platform environment that supports a whole slew of languages.

Also, check out Coursera and EdX. They usually have beginner programming classes running, and they're actually structured courses. If there's none running, you can usually access the course materials to do self-study.

Also, cs50.tv has all the lectures and materials for the Harvard Intro CS class. It's hard work and rigorous, but rewarding. MIT Open Courseware also has a lot of material from past offerings of their Intro CS series. One of my friends is doing this now.

If you're interested in game programming, I might recommend a book I used to learn. Beginning C++ Through Game Programming is what I used back when I was still learning. Mind you, you won't be learning anything with graphics, but you will be learning programming (and one of the harder, more widespread languages while you're at it).

There's a lot of resources available. Those are the ones I recommend right off the bat. Programming can be tricky, but beginning is the hardest part. Don't get discouraged, stay with it, and eventually, it'll be easy! Good luck!

> Which of the three will give the best chance to telecommute?

From my experience, as a general rule, I have found that anything related to web development is especially suited for telecommuting, so your choice would be Ruby on Rails. You can telecommute with roles like Sharepoint developers, DBA, sysadmin, but my impression is that most of these roles are in traditional big companies and they may not always be open to 100% telecommuting.

But be aware that by choosing a field that doesn't require your presence on-site, you're competing with developers from developing countries who will be able to outbid you.

> Which of the three is the least challenging to be learned on your own (and if you have any good learning resources you can recommend, I'll take them all, thanks)?

I think all are equally challenging if your aim is to be really good in that field and difficulty is a subjective notion anyway.

As for resources: when I was dabbling in Ruby on Rails a few years ago, I found this tutorial very useful: Ruby on Rails Tutorial

You also need a good understanding of the Ruby programming language. I recommend Programming Ruby, though I liked The Ruby Programming Language because it was a lot more concise (if dated). You can ask /r/ruby for more suggestions.

First, make sure that you've built some complex apps in vanilla JS, and have faced some sort of issue of scale (ie. problems that came up because your app has a lot of code). Maybe your code is really long and difficult to organize. Maybe you end up repeating the same code in a lot of places. Etc.

That way when you try a framework, you'll have some idea why it does what it does, and what problem it's trying to solve.

As far as specific libraries, I'd try these in this order:

• Lodash (or equivalently, Underscore). This is a really useful utility library, and can be used regardless of what fremework you're using.
  
• Backbone is the most barebones and vesatile of the popular frameworks, and is meant to be used in conjunction with jQuery (which you already know) and Lodash (which you will have learned). Backbone will give you a good sense for what MVC is.
  
• React is a level of abstraction above Backbone, and offers 2-way binding and component-level separation in addition to MVC (more acurately, MVVM). I'd encourage you to use it with Browserify, which lets you use NodeJS's syntax for injecting code, but in the browser.
  
• Angular is more opinionated than React, and introduces high level concepts like dependency injection.
  
• Optionally, also try out Meteor (which introduces full stack, 4-way binding), Ember (a super opinionated framework, most similar to Angular), and Polymer (a very future-facing framework, most similar to React).
  
  For general education, here are a few books I recommended in another thread:
  
  Design patterns:
  
  
• http://addyosmani.com/resources/essentialjsdesignpatterns/book/#designpatternsjavascript
  
• https://leanpub.com/javascript-allonge/read
  
• https://leanpub.com/javascript-spessore/read
  
  The JavaScript language:
  
  
• http://www.amazon.com/Effective-JavaScript-Specific-Software-Development/dp/0321812182
  
• http://www.amazon.com/JavaScript-Good-Parts-Douglas-Crockford/dp/0596517742
  
  Hope that helps, and good luck!

7-zip uses a mix of C, C++ and assembly. Unless you have experience with any of these languages, I would highly recommend starting with something much simpler.

I would say if you're trying to learn programming, you need to strip away all the extra 'stuff' that gets packaged up to make a production system. Don't worry about the GUI, and put WPF and C# to the side (for the time being). Start with something simple that will allow you to learn variables, functions, types, control flow, etc. A lot of people recommend Python, and that's a fine place to start. Any language where you can open a new file, write a few lines of code, and see a result would be ideal (Lua, Ruby, Javascript, etc).

More to the point of your question, GUI design is hard. There are all kinds of issues that have to be taken into account: event callbacks from the 'worker' code to let the interface know something changed, threading issues (does the interface lock up while the backend is working?), does the 7z file format even lend itself to parsing just a directory listing without decompressing the entire file?... There is a lot there, and it's not a good starting point. It's something that you can move toward as you learn the basics, though. And I always like looking through other codebases looking for good ideas.

If you're really serious about specifically working with 7-zip, the code is available at their website. You'll need to download the source code from 7-zip.org, then you'll need C Primer Plus and C++ Primer Plus. These are the best 'intro to...' books that I've found for C and C++. You're looking at a few months of reading and experimenting, and a lot of frustration. You're not only going to learn the languages, but also the Windows API that will allow you to interact with the folder views. These are somewhat stubbed out in the 7-zip source, but the specific view you're talking about would need to be written from scratch.

Regardless, it sounds like a fun project and if you put in the time I'm sure you'll get some benefit from it. Just be aware that this is trying to paddle against the current, and it is easier to take a step by step approach (in my opinion).

I would strongly recommend The Ruby Programming Language over the pickaxe book at this stage. For a long time the pickaxe was the definitive book on Ruby so people tend to suggest it out of habit - but in the past year or so this book came out and in my opinion its substantially better. Check out the Amazon reviews if you have any doubts.

Additionally, if you want a fun intro to programming that's short, informative and funny, you can't go wrong with _why's poignant guide to ruby (give it a few pages, but trust me, its awesome.

The assembly is rather light at the beginning. In your first year you have to write some assembly to control a little car with infrared sensors, but it's really easy. Later on though, there are pretty interesting classes on assembly which are pre-reqs for classes on optimizing/debugging. Also it never hurts to learn more. But this definitely isn't something I'd be too worried about coming in.

After K.N. King's book, we don't really cover many more C books. But Kernighan and Ritchie's C Programming Language is a good thing to read.

In terms of C++ books we cover, it's a little weird. For one class, we needed C++ Primer and another we needed C++ Primer Plus. We've also needed Algorithms in C++ by Robert Sedgewick and a couple others. However, most of our classes don't have "required" textbooks, just recommended ones. If you send me a message I can compile a list of the recommended ones from my courses this far.

Personally, I'd highly recommend all of Scott Meyers' books, such as Effective C++, More Effective C++, and Effective STL.

Here's my list of the classics:

General Computing

• But How Do It Know? - The Basic Principles of Computers for Everyone
  
  
• The Elements of Computing Systems: Building a Modern Computer from First Principles
  
  
• Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software
  
  
• Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
  
  Computer Science
  
  
• The New Turing Omnibus: Sixty-Six Excursions in Computer Science
  
  
• Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools, 2nd Edition (aka The Dragon Book)
  
  
• The Art of Computer Programming
  
  
• Algorithms, 4th Edition
  
  
• Introduction to Algorithms, 3rd Edition (aka CLRS)
  
  
• Essential Algorithms: A Practical Approach to Computer Algorithms Using Python and C#, 2nd Edition
  
  
• Grokking Algorithms: An Illustrated Guide for Programmers and Other Curious People
  
  
• Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, 2nd Edition (aka SICP, available for free on the MIT website)
  
  
• Discrete Mathematics with Applications, 4th Edition
  
  Software Development
  
  
• Designing Data-Intensive Applications: The Big Ideas Behind Reliable, Scalable, and Maintainable Systems by Martin Kleppmann
  
  
• Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software (aka The Gang of Four)
  
  
• Think Like a Programmer: An Introduction to Creative Problem Solving
  
  
• The Pragmatic Programmer: your journey to mastery, 20th Anniversary Edition, 2nd Edition
  
  
• The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering
  
  
• Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction, 2nd Edition
  
  
• The Design of Everyday Things
  
  
• Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship
  
  
• Programming Pearls, 2nd Edition
  
  
• Soft Skills: The Software Developer's Life Manual
  
  
• Hello, Startup: A Programmer's Guide to Building Products, Technologies, and Teams
  
  
• Hacker's Delight, 2nd Edition
  
  
• Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams, 3rd Edition
  
  Case Studies
  
  
• The Soul of a New Machine
  
  
• Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture
  
  
• Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution
  
  
• Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins Of The Internet
  
  
• Fire in the Valley: The Birth and Death of the Personal Computer, 3rd Edition
  
  Employment
  
  
• Cracking the Coding Interview: 189 Programming Questions and Solutions, 6th Edition
  
  
• The Complete Software Developer's Career Guide: How to Learn Programming Languages Quickly, Ace Your Programming Interview, and Land Your Software Developer Dream Job
  
  
• The Self-Taught Programmer: The Definitive Guide to Programming Professionally
  
  
• The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development
  
  Language-Specific
  
  C
  
  
• The C Programming Language, 2nd Edition
  
  Python
  
  
• Automate the Boring Stuff with Python: Practical Programming for Total Beginners, 2nd Edition
  
  
• Python Crash Course: A Hands-On, Project-Based Introduction to Programming
  
  
• Python Programming: An Introduction to Computer Science, 3rd Edition
  
  
• Effective Python: 59 Specific Ways to Write Better Python
  
  C#
  
  
• The C# Player's Guide, 3rd Edition
  
  C++
  
  
• The C++ Programming Language, 4th Edition
  
  
• Starting Out with C++: from Control Structures to Objects, 9th Edition
  
  Java
  
  
• Introduction to Java Programming and Data Structures: Comprehensive Version, 11th Edition
  
  
• [Java: A Beginner's Guide](https://www.amazon.com/Java-Beginners-Seventh-Herbert-Schildt/dp/1259589315/, 7th Edition)
  
  
• Java: The Complete Reference, 11th Edition
  
  
• Core Java Volume I - Fundamentals, 11th Edition
  
  
• Starting Out with Java: From Control Structures through Objects, 6th Edition
  
  
• Effective Java, 3rd Edition
  
  Linux Shell Scripts
  
  
• The Linux Command Line: A Complete Introduction, 2nd Edition
  
  
• Wicked Cool Shell Scripts: 101 Scripts for Linux, OS X, and UNIX Systems, 2nd Edition
  
  
• Linux Command Line and Shell Scripting Bible
  
  
• Mastering Linux Shell Scripting
  
  Web Development
  
  
• Learning Web Design: A Beginner's Guide to HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Web Graphics, 5th Edition
  
  
• Eloquent JavaScript: A Modern Introduction to Programming, 3rd Edition (also available for free on the author's website)
  
  
• JavaScript and JQuery: Interactive Front-End Web Development
  
  
• HTML and CSS: Design and Build Websites
  
  
• You Don't Know JS: Up & Going
  
  Ruby and Rails
  
  
• Ruby on Rails Tutorial: Learn Web Development with Rails, 4th Edition (Note: this book is somewhat out of date compared to the live version on the author's website.)
  
  
• The Well Grounded Rubyist, 3rd Edition
  
  
• Practical Object-Oriented Design in Ruby: An Agile Primer
  
  
• Agile Web Development with Rails 5.1
  
  
• Programming Ruby 1.9 & 2.0: The Pragmatic Programmers' Guide, 4th Edition
  
  
• Eloquent Ruby
  
  Assembly
  
  
• Assembly Language for x86 Processors, 8th Edition

There are some good books to help you in your quest, they discusses all programming techniques needed in competitions: greedy algorithms, dynamic programming, data structures... A lot of overlap
between them :

Competitive Programming 2 : Great book, a lot of
information packed

Art of Programming Contest : FREE book available from ACM site

Programming Challenges : From a famous
competition Professor (Skiena)

The Hitchker Guide to Programming Contests : Another FREE book,
Great Ideas

The Algorithm Design Manual : Another book from
skiena, talks about the practical applications of famous techniques and
algorithms used in competitions

Introduction to algorithms : THE book about
algorithms... In-depth explanations

Google code Jam contest analysis : Google Code Jam is a great
competition, with a lot of hard problems. And all of them have a
solution and analysis !

which books exactly, please guide me.

these ones?

Effective C++: 55 Specific Ways to Improve Your Programs and Designs (3rd Edition)

Effective Modern C++: 42 Specific Ways to Improve Your Use of C++11 and C++14 1st Edition

More Effective C++: 35 New Ways to Improve Your Programs and Designs 1st Edition

What is the difference between them? It seems effective cpp 3 is from 2005 and more effective cpp is from 1996. Is there a point in reading more effective cpp after reading the third edition of effective cpp?

Also, what do you think about C++ How to Program?

Since you're starting a Java programming course in two weeks, I'd recommend this one.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0071809252/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

It's one of the books I own. Admittedly this is not the book I would normally give to a complete novice in programming, but I think it's the best for the situation. It's a pretty fat book and full of knowledge, but it assumes the reader has some sort of technical background. It doesn't do much to help you visualize it in other ways. However it gets straight to the point, is fairly clear, and is ordered well. If you can understand the material in the first 3 chapters before the start of your class I think you will be very well off.

> I'm really only showing them the deep end

Fair enough.

> const correctness has less functional impact on what a program does than functions/arrays/pointers/OOP/many-other-concepts

True, it doesn't affect the behavior of the code. But code that works is not inherently good code. It's hard to write good code in C++ and I see a lot of bad C++ come through r/learnprogramming so I am of the opinion that best practices should be taught early. I can understand your argument with opportunity cost though.

Perhaps it's sufficient to say at the outset "if you don't expect something to change, mark it const; I'll explain further in the future". Then in your lectures you can mention it in passing, e.g. "This function should not modify this parameter so I am making it const". It's easier to remove a too-restrictive const than it is to insert a necessary one later. You can expose them to consistently good const usage before you explain in detail.

> I may ask for your feedback on that lecture specifically when I do it, if you're willing to participate.

Absolutely. Just let me know when.

> Movie editing is the problem

Oh, sorry; I misunderstood. Lightworks seems to be the best free editor comparable to Premiere.

> Any suggestions for good resources

In my opinion, C++ is always best learned from a book. The two that I would recommend right now are C++ Primer 5th ed and The C++ Standard Library 2nd ed. Though you will be able to skip around to the C++11 parts, both would also be good for your students.

Take a look at the book Effective Javascript. It's a really excellent book that deep dives into specific examples and what to look out for.

Secondly, check out some of the tutorials on nodeschool.io. They get into some really neat and important Javascript things.

Thirdly, write some backend Javascript code in nodejs so you can use the skills you already have but apply them to backend concepts. Heroku has some really nice tutorials that will get you writing server code in just a few minutes. https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/getting-started-with-nodejs#introduction.

Fourthly, use one or more of the popular frontend frameworks to build a simple Todo app. In fact, if you have the time, build the same Todo app in a few different frameworks, so you get an idea of how they work.

Also, when interviewing, just be honest. Tell them you have a number of years of experience but that you've worked for organizations that preferred quick and dirty over perfect. You can parlay that into a positive by showing how learned to get stuff done quickly without spending too much time on small details.

Python Cookbook 3rd ed., by David Beazley and Brian K. Jones, has a dedicated chapter about metaprogramming. The book is so good the other stuff may also give some insight on metaprogramming or alternatives. I already read it and it gave me insight on my code about metaprogramming and other topics, so it is pretty useful. You can also find a lecture from Beazley about the topic with a quick google search with his name and the "metaprogramming" word.

There's also Fluent Python by Luciano Ramalho, which has three dedicated chapters about metaprogramming. Didn't read the chapters myself but I'm half way into the book and it is awesome, so I'm having great expectations about those chapters.

Don't mind the metaprogramming "chapter count", it is just a piece of information. Quality is what you should be looking for. And I believe those books have it. Even though I admit an entire book about metaprogramming would be neat.

I'd recommend C Primer Plus, though to be honest it would be a much better investment to study C++ with C++ Primer Plus from the same author.

Do you have to go with C? C++ is better for beginners while still maintaining all the C things. If you absolutely have to go with C (which I'm assuming you are studying for coding systems - most likely embedded, or to maintain legacy code), the book I pointed out should start you out nicely.

If it is programming you want to learn, I'd recommend trying your hands at Java or Python or any interpreted OOP-focused language first. Java has very nice IDEs (Eclipse, NetBeans, etc.); it has its roots in C/C++ so it should help making the transition back and forth. C/C++ can be a mess to get the build environment set up correctly if you are not using an IDE like Visual Studio.

If you are in college, a lot of these technical books are free through your online library.

>How do you get clients?

80% of my clients I've met via reddit (/r/forhire, /r/torontojobs , most often from people responding to my posts, sometimes months after I post them). A few others were met through friends who worked at the company

> do you charge for the price of a domain an hosting or do you expect the client to take care of it

Depends on the client. Ask them if they want you to take care of it for them.

> I won't want to sound super shady to anyone who might be interested in getting a webpage built by me.

Have a list of prior work, social media presence helps (twitter, linkedin, github). Your portfolio doesn't have to be a website. I send a bulleted list

Having your own domain name for emails should also help. Google Apps is just $50/year.


>I have experience in HTML and CSS

Learn Javascript. At least a little bit. I'd recommend reading this book cover to cover : Effective Javascript by David Herman, a chapter a day, it'll take you 2 weeks, maybe 3.

Ah, okay on that I agree. I thought originally you were dismissing reading entire books in general because of tools like google which gives instant access to individual bits of information.

Particularly, for algorithm design, this one I read for college. It starts out with a motivation, what is an algorithm? Why do we study them? It then gives definitions for how to measure the performance of an algorithm. With a metric established, it picks a basic process we take for granted, addition, and breaks it down to how a computer would run the algorithm that we run in our heads. Then, it introduces an alternative algorithm that actually performs better than the one we use intuitively. And this is all in the first chapter. Every paragraph builds on another, relates back to the chapter, and ultimately, the theme of the book which implores us to answer the questions: Can we solve this problem? If so, how fast? And can we do better? Dynamic programming, divide-and-conquer, linear programming are all useful tools in and of themselves, but unified they provide a coherent narrative: What kinds of problems can computers never solve? How should one approach a problem that, on the surface, seems unfamiliar? And to be fair, the insights are expressed directly. In italics. At the beginning of the textbook. But it wouldn't have much meaning unless you understood the context in which the insights related to. Anywho, this is just one example of many where reading a book in its entirety allowed me to gain a valuable skill (or in literature, a different perspective), rather than a fixed atom of knowledge.

I guess when I first read your post, it worried me when you said that the information density of most books is impractically small and that the value of most books lie in random particles dispersed throughout, rather than as a unified collection of ideas. For me, it has been the opposite: the majority of books I've read, though time consuming, have paid enormous dividends not because of the discrete particles of knowledge they dispensed (Hamlet kills Claudius), but rather because they have changed the way I look at life (what am I tasked to do by my family or society, what purpose is worth acting for?) Though it seems like you understand this already, you just don't like the fact that the author seems to advocate for undue amounts of reading because "that's how it was in my day".

I guess I'm going to go ahead and be "that guy".

Don't aim to work with a specific language.

I feel you should reframe your goal to be a "problem solver" that knows how to pick and use various tools to solve a problem. C++ may be one of those tools. Maybe C. Maybe Python. Maybe Java. You want to develop your skill set to be flexible enough to adopt the right tool for a job. Now, that's not to say you can't be a language expert. Language experts are very valuable and becoming one is a perfectly reasonable goal. That said, I think you'll find that you have many more opportunities when you remain flexible.

With that out of the way, I would say good next steps for continued C++ mastery are to read and understand Scott Meyers' excellent books:

• Effective C++
  
• More Effective C++
  
• Effective STL
  
• Effective Modern C++
  
  Also go through the CppCoreGuidelines.
  
  Beyond the language, make sure you know your standard data structures and algorithms.

10000 limit again. Reserving this comment for the Programming section:

PROGRAMMING
Gray Hat Python: Python Programming for Hackers and Reverse Engineers
Beginning Python
The Python Standard Library by Example (Developer's Library)
Shell Scripting
Shell Scripting Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach
Linux Command Line and Shell Scripting Bible, Second Edition
Wicked Cool Shell Scripts
sed & awk (2nd Edition)
The Ruby Programming Language
Beginning Ruby: From Novice to Professional
Ruby on Rails 3 Tutorial: Learn Rails by Example
Agile Web Development with Rails
Automating Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 with Windows PowerShell 2.0
Pragmatic Guide to Subversion
Programming Perl
C++ Primer Plus
The AWK Programming Language thanks sjhill
Modern Perl thanks three18ti
High-Order Perl thanks three18ti
The Art of Scalability thanks mr_chip
Scalability Rules thanks mr_chip
Continuous Delivery thanks mr_chip
The Varnish Book thanks mr_chip

A good metric is by how expensive the object you're passing around is to make a copy of. In the case where you're passing by value, you're probably returning by value as well so two deep copies there. An alternative is references which are syntactically similar to pass by value but retain the memory niceties of pointers which don't require a full copy but rather just the passing of a memory address.

Typically my rule of thumb is bigger than a pointer use a const reference unless I need a fiddle with the bits in the object I'm passing then I'll go with a pointer. Given enough practice and seeing enough code you sort of get a feel for when it's best to use what, but you kind of need to understand the tradeoffs between how you throw around data.

Passing references everywhere is bad though because it makes it less obvious to person reading/using your code that the object you're passing in could potentially be different object than the one you passed in. If your function takes a pointer it tells the reader that you probably intend to do something with the object's data in the function to change it. Which comes to the second point of using 'const' everywhere which not only informs the reader that the object will not be changed but also binds your function to a contract to not be able to change the value.

For more stuff like this I highly recommend Effective C++ and More Effective C++

To date, the best programming book that I've read is C Programming Language by K&R. It's a pretty complete text on the C language. It is more than sufficient to enable the reader to be a good C programmer, yet it is still entirely digestable by new programmers. It is 274 pages. There are some recent gems, like Programming Clojure (304 pages). However, these days the norm seems to be more like Applying Domain-Driven Design and Patterns: With Examples in C# and .NET (576 pages), Real World Haskell (710 pages), and The C++ Programming Language (1030 pages). These books are all good. They just are hard to carry around and hard to hold while reading for long periods. I'm looking for good programming books that are short; an upper limit of roughly 325 pages. Post links to your favorites!

An EXCELLENT response. I'm a research psychologist and I think that is an absolutely fair summary of what to expect if you go the grad school route.

As far as "what you're expected to know", this will vary by which of the four options you choose; the best RAs i've mentored are always interested in two things: stats and current literature. Google Scholar your favorite topic in psychology and the backwards/forwards links will connect you to a wealth of ideas. As for stats, they get a bad rap, but i can suggest a few books that might turn around anyone with stats-loathing:

-Andy Field's SPSS/R how-to books. Honestly, the man has probably done more for beginning psychologists than Starbucks. Very readable, even good for more developed psychologists to get ideas for new analyses.
http://www.amazon.com/Discovering-Statistics-Using-Andy-Field/dp/1446200469/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419965487&sr=1-2.

-Mac & Creel: Bible for signal detection theory, a cool way of thinking about perception as a process of separating signal from noise.
http://www.amazon.com/Detection-Theory-A-Users-Guide/dp/0805842314

I strongly recommend Beginning C++ Through Game Programming.

I'm currently in my second year at university studying games programming and this book has been a great help to me. It teaches you everything you need to know about C++ and does it using relevant and interesting examples, as well as explaining how and why different things would be used for games programming. After learning the basics you start create simple games such as "guess my number" and "tic tac toe" and finish by creating a "blackjack" game using advanced coding techniques.

from the same author

This is an incomplete list of arguments in favor of immutability:

[...]
their usage is side-effect free (no defensive copies)
[...]

and

How can an immutable object represent a mutable entity? Look at an immutable class, File, and its methods, for example length() and delete().

well yeah, an immutable object can represent a mutable entity through side effect, great!

He seems to have built a whole framework of thinking through idiosyncrasies and he gets to conflate in ugly ways the benefits of immutability on values and referential transparency on functions (well methods because java model of oop).

For instance he claims that

truly immutable objects are always thread-safe

This means that multiple threads can access the same object at the same time, without clashing with another thread.

Which is true if you consider objects as bag of values with side-effect free referentially transparent methods, however he calls these "constant" objects as a subgroup of immutable objects. And no, once you have side-effectful methods in the mix, thread-safety gets the boot.

I have to say that the ill defined concept of OOP is prone to this.

I would recommend him this excellent no-nonsense book:

http://www.amazon.com/Concepts-Techniques-Models-Computer-Programming/dp/0262220695

Hello there I cannot help with your code because I am almost falling asleep but I made a version of Tic Tac Toe and think you would benefit from looking at it. I am not sure of what your skill level is - mine isn't good so don't worry - but have a look at how my named my variables and function names and how they handle things.

https://github.com/RyanSwann1/Tic-Tac-Toe/tree/master

Also, this book has been invaluable for me in teaching good design for applications. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Beginning-C-Through-Game-Programming/dp/1305109910/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1452898795&sr=8-1&keywords=c%2B%2B+through+game+programming

Whilst it isn't theory heavy it gives fun examples on coding principles and is honestly an incredibly good introductory book.

Web Forms is, in my opinion, a big mess. However, I think MVC is pretty good and I don't think it's hard to learn. I read the last version of this book and it was enough for me to start creating an MVC app on a two-man team (with me doing more than half the work) and have it ready to launch V1 in two months: http://www.amazon.com/Pro-ASP-NET-MVC-Adam-Freeman/dp/1430265299/

Anyway, relational databases are likely to be with us for some time (NoSQL is still pretty much a niche in my opinion) and "cloud" programming isn't really that different, other than that you can't really count on machine state. All that means is you have to write to a database or a separate file store.

edit: Another thought is that honestly the kind of practices you have to do for cloud Web programming are good ones anyway... even if you're hosting it yourself, not counting on machine state means you can have as many instances as you want, which makes it easy to scale. If you're relying on the machine state you have a much longer road to scaling as you have to figure out how to keep those in sync or else factor out all the code using it.

I've found this book to be quite a good book and is quite complete. It may be a bit of a jump into the deep end, but I feel as though they explain things simply enough, piece by piece.

http://www.amazon.com/C-Primer-Plus-5th-Edition/dp/0672326973/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1333572620&sr=8-1

Also, C/C++ are GREAT first languages to learn. You have the opportunity to really understand how the computer itself functions with these languages, whereas with higher level languages, this type of understanding is quite easily lost as it becomes less important. It really depends on why you're learning it as to if it's a good first language or not.

I had a lot of my start with C++. This was the textbook I used to learn it initially and I had a lot of fun going through this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Beginning-C-Through-Game-Programming/dp/1305109910/(I would suggest reading only up to right before DirectX chapter though, since I believe the DirectX section has been outdated for a long time now for these books. Personally, I only briefly learned to do DirectX programming in general in college and never used it professionally, so I'm not aware of how often much older versions of DirectX is used, but I remember hearing things like the X files format we used in college got deprecated.)

I have worked professionally as a developer in and out of the game industry and I definitely agree that learning C++ to start would actually be advantageous, regardless of what languages you may have to work in later on because it makes everything easier to learn in comparison I feel. I use C# now for my current role and never had taken courses in it or such, but I was able to self teach it because of my C++ background.

It's a great course and Dimitris is a very good teacher. It is pretty challenging and Dimitris expects you to keep up, so most importantly take it seriously and make sure you intuitively and analytically understand each part. Ask questions and go to office hours. Some of the techniques taught in this class are very important for use in industry.

When I took the class he used Algorithms by Dasgupta:http://www.amazon.com/Algorithms-Sanjoy-Dasgupta/dp/0073523402

There used to be a free PDF available as well.

Your questions are actually very relevant for optimizing compilers (and for people who like to do bit twiddling). Many folks already mentioned division by a power of 2 - that's just shifting the bits to the right by the right number of places. Very fast. But there are also algorithms for dividing by other constants - for example, there are specific tricks for efficiently dividing by 3, 5, or 7. Compilers will look for opportunities to convert general-purpose division into one of these forms. And some times that can happen as a result of what's called "constant propagation". So you write in one place in the code a division like: "x/y", where locally you don't know what values x and y have. The compiler, however, might be able to prove that y is always 3, so it optimizes the general division to use the faster division-by-3 algorithm.

For an interesting read on this many other bit twiddling tricks, check out Hacker's Delight. It's a fun read for anyone interested in this kind of thing.

I started programming at around 12 and I can assure you, if you put some effort, you can close the distance in a matter of months. My advice:

• Learn C and Python. Learning C will help you think at a lower level about programs, plus in the microcontroller world it's the lingua franca. Python is great for prototyping ideas quickly and also learning programming/CS concepts without syntax getting in the way. You could also start building "big" programs with it given that the speed of interpretation is getting faster and faster.
  
  
• Get Hacker's Delight. It's a great little book FULL of programming advice and tips.
  
  
• Learn Your Data Structures. This is a very VERY important thing.
  
  
• Program as much as you can. Practice makes perfect.
  
  

> even some "old but gold" ones are fine

The Scott Meyers book you mentioned, Effective C++, is just that: old but gold.

I'd also suggest you read his other books, Effective STL and More Effective C++.

These 3 books stand out amongst many for me, for their accessibility and effectiveness. It is worthwhile reading them now and getting a solid understanding on pre C++11 design principles etc.

Once his Effective C++11 book comes out, read that too!

Following these, but now moving from intermediate to expert level, the single biggest influence on how I designed and wrote C++ was Modern C++ Design by Andrei Alexandrescu.

It's pre C++11, but the insights into generic algorithm design using templates are just incredible.

Excerpt from the description on Amazon:

> Alexandrescu offers a cutting-edge approach to software design that unites design patterns, generic programming, and C++, enabling programmers to achieve expressive, flexible, and highly reusable code.

If there is ever one book I recommend people to read, it's this one.

System Era Softworks are looking for C++ developers, so your information seems accurate.

I’d recommend you start out [playing around(https://www.amazon.com/Python-Cookbook/dp/1449340377) with Python before committing to C++. It’s much easier to achieve to some tangible goals. Maybe start out scripting some simple tasks. E.g. create ten files that each contain their own creation date and file path. Then progress through making some short text-based multi-choice adventure game (Gender-Neutral-Internet-Person and the Quest for the Reddit Upvotes). Start out simple and see if you enjoy the challenge before committing to learning C++ through game development.

P.S.: System Era lists familiarity with Python as a desired skill. It’s still relevant for automating tasks and getting stuff done even when you learn more complex languages.

P.P.S.: Python 3 is the right choice. 2.7 is an outdated dialect. You’ll know what this means soon enough.

OK, you could start with a book like this:

http://www.amazon.com/Java-Beginners-Guide-Herbert-Schildt/dp/0071809252/

I'd highly encourage you to actually do the exercises, though. Programming is all about doing, not reading. You should spend roughly 10 hours programming for every 1 hour of reading.

Even if you only make it through one chapter, it will get you in the right mindset.

Alternatively, if you haven't already learned HTML and you want to learn something different, but super useful, try learning HTML (and CSS) to make a simple website. Note that HTML is not programming, but it does get you used to the idea of writing syntax for a computer to parse, and trying to figure out what went wrong when it doesn't do what you intended. Plus, HTML is used all over the place so it's incredibly useful to know. If you know a little bit, learn more - try some more advanced CSS.

Java, A Beginner's Guide. is a well-paced book that's not huge (about 700 pages).

Java, The Complete Reference. by the same author of the above book is, as the name suggests, a huge comprehensive reference (about 1500 pages). I wouldn't use it to learn the basics, but would use it later as a reference.

Introduction to Java Programming, Comprehensive Version. is a slow-paced huge book (more than 1500 pages) that will benefit a beginner a lot.

Now if you are in a hurry and you need to go through the basic s quickly and possibly miss some details, I would recommend Think Java. It's a small (about 300 pages) free fast-paced book that will get you hooked quickly.

I've never done any embedded software development, but as a web developer looking at you from the other side, this is what I see...

At the domain level, you'll be working with different technologies than you're used to. Embedded software developers do a lot more low-level interactions with inputs from sensors, so you'll see less of that. Web developers are generally dealing more with human interaction and data persistence and retrieval.

Another big thing to think about would be your OOP experience. Are you familiar with SOLID? Have you done any real-world development using OOP? Most of the web frameworks available today (from a server-side standpoint, at least...particularly ASP.NET) are rooted in OOP.

If you've got 10 years of experience developing, learning C# will be easy. I wouldn't focus as much on the language itself as I would learning the .NET standard libraries. You'll pick up the patterns as you go. I really liked the "Pro ASP.NET MVC" books, now available for MVC 5.

If you're looking specifically for books on C# and .NET development, I don't think there's any book better than CLR via C#. Don't let the title scare you away, it's a great book for learning the lower-level bits of the .NET platform, which are relevant everywhere from ASP.NET to WinForms.

If you aren't aware, there are huge changes coming to the .NET framework and ASP.NET, so you could choose to focus on ASP.NET 5 and get ahead of the game a bit, at the expense of availability of reference material.

CLRS is the standard text for algorithms, but it is not obviously student-friendly. (I can't learn from it very well, and there are few exercises.) I'd recommend you take a look at this book, written by reputable authors, which is easy to read, covers interesting topics in addition to the standard core, and has tons of exercises. The book used to be available online but now McGraw Hill has told the authors to take it down. Googling "Dasgupta Algorithms" will give you a pdf either way.

[Also note the book's chapter on complexity. It provides a nice intuitive intro into NP-completeness that's somewhat light on rigour and uses non-standard definitions, but reading it first might make understanding Sipser easier.]

Thank you for your comment. Yep, regarding the pedagogy of LP, I have pretty much covered what you say here

>This shows that LPs can be solved in finite time, which isn't even obvious. It also introduces the essential idea behind simplex, namely that a vertex can be described combinatorially by choosing n of the k inequalities.

in a previous article. Also this book [Algorithms - Dasgupta, Papadimitriou, Vazirani] inspired me to write about LP in a more intuitive way, it has a really good introductory chapter in LP :)

"The whole OOP side" is the most important thing for understanding how Rails works. I mean, apart from the object hierarchy, there's nothing to it. Rails is a framework, and you use it just like any other collection of objects.

I am inferring from your reading that you think of OOP as something hard to learn. It's not! It's really simple, though if you're brand new to all of this it may seem like information overload. But really, it's nothing compared to learning Rails.

If you're new to web development, learning Rails is going to be hard. There's a lot to it. In order to really understand Rails you have to understand HTML, CSS, templates and dynamic HTML, probably JavaScript, database access which means probably SQL as well, and any number of other things. The difference between a client and a server. It's not easy.

But that doesn't mean you can't learn it. Hell, every web developer today has been in the situation of feeling overloaded by all the different pieces, and they all got through it. So can you.

But it might be a lot to tackle if you're new to programming (by which I mean you've been coding regularly for less than six months). One thing at a time might be best to prevent burnout.

If you want to learn Ruby, what follows is the sort of advice that everyone gives and everyone ignores, but I'm posting it anyway because I really believe that it's the best thing you can do (it's what I wish I did when I was learning how to program):

Read The Ruby Programming Langage.

It's short.

It's co-written by matz, the creator of Ruby.

It describes everything in the language.

Read it once straight through. Expect to understand about 20% of it. That's okay. There's a lot of stuff like unicode support details that you really don't care about. That's okay too. Skim that. The point is that, after reading it, you will know everything in the language. There will be nothing that you've never heard of.

You probably won't understand the difference between a block and a lambda and a proc after one reading, but you'll know that there are things called blocks/lambdas/procs and they're similar but subtly different and later on when you encounter them in the wild you won't be surprised at their behavior. You'll be able to say "Hey, I know that thing. That's a block." And then you'll be able to google "ruby blocks" and find out more.

Once you've read it, you will have no unknown unknowns. You can go out and code away for a few months, maybe work all the way through Learn Ruby the Hard Way, and later on come back and re-read. This time you'll understand 90-100% of it.

Intimate familiarity with your language of choice is important if you're in this for the long haul.

Edit: I realized that I didn't really answer your question directly: you should learn all of Ruby. It is not as hard as it sounds. Now, you shouldn't necessarily learn all of Ruby and then start learning Rails. You'll be learning a lot of Ruby as you go along, and before too long you'll stop running into new concepts. But never stop improving your Ruby knowledge until you've learned everything there is to know. You'll never know "enough" Ruby until you know it all.

So I found the book C Interfaces and Implementations, which looks pretty good. Do you have any other recommendations for design pattern books?

I have been following the Linux kernel style guide for a while and I am pretty happy with it. I have skimmed some random kernel code a few times but always felt actually diving in and seriously reading it would require a big time commitment, maybe better to start with something smaller first like Contiki...

For you, I would recommend going with python cookbook. It’s organized by type of thing you need to do, and has really rich and useful examples. Also watch any David Beazley videos you can find. You’ll pick up on basic Python syntax really quickly so having a book like this will be a great reference when you need to do something specific.

> Failing that, are there any good cheatsheets/references for JS "gotchas" and unusual features that devs from other languages might not be familiar with?


There are entire books dedicated to this! (Also some entertaining talks.)


Here are some good JS books not aimed at total beginners:

• JavaScript: The Good Parts
  
• Professional JavaScript for Web Developers
  
• Effective JavaScript
  
  
  Bonus (to give you a sense of the kinds of "gotchas" you'll find in JS):
  
  
  // Even though you pass in numbers, JS sorts them lexicographically
  > [5, 1, 10].sort();
  [ 1, 10, 5 ]
  
  // You "fix" this by passing in a custom comparator
  > [5, 1, 10].sort(function(a, b) { return a - b; });
  [ 1, 5, 10 ]
  
  // This probably makes sense to someone, somewhere
  > Math.min();
  Infinity
  
  > Math.max();
  -Infinity
  
  // Some things are best left unknown
  > {} + {};
  NaN
  
  > var wat = {} + {}; wat;
  '[object Object][object Object]'
  
  Here are a bunch more in quiz form.

Challenges for Game Designers is a great book had a ton of fun trying out all the different challenges they give you.

Another book I would add to that list is Beginning C++ programming through game design it does a great job at teaching the basics of C++ through some fun activities.

So make a project, that's how I learned ios dev. Think of a project you want to do and work on it bit by bit, learning along the way.

Also cookbooks are great for exactly this; they outline a project and post the complete code along with a bit of instructions as to what is being done and why.


Here is a textbook that can really help, you can find it for free 'online':
http://www.amazon.ca/Python-Cookbook-David-Beazley/dp/1449340377

Also the 'learn python the hard way' text is only something like 300 pages and gets pretty extensive with the projects towards the end.

Having gone through something similar where I worked at a hospital from 2-11 (not nearly as bad as your hours, but still):

If you can manage it financially, find a way to go to school, even if it's part time. Large employers are required by law in most countries to give you reasonable accomodations if you're a full or part time student. It requires you telling your employer and HR once you start classes: I need X amount of time for homework per week. I need in order to be successful here and at school to work no more than X hours.

In this case the X is what you need.

School gives you structure for programming, and someone (your professors) to hold you accountable to working on it. And you're paying for it in most cases, so you have a financial incentive to do the work. You get out of a class what you put in, financially or otherwise.

But returning to school isn't a reality for everyone either. Maybe you just give yourself one problem a week you find in a "Learn [Language Name] through [Whatever Interests You]" book or website. I heartily recommend Beginning C++ Through Game Programming personally. It's how I started, and the chapters/projects are small enough to be digestible in the limited time frame you have. I'd look for a book like that in a language that interests you if you can't justify school financially. They give you small enough projects to learn with that you can work on when you can.

Check with your local library for any resources they have. I know Omaha (Nebraska) Public Library has Lynda access for every patron.

I also watch Humble Bundle. They have bundles on coding, even game development ones are useful tools. $15 for enough books to keep you going a while isn't a bad deal.

• Spend more time working with Java, to become familiar with some of the language's subtleties.
  
• Read The Practice of Programming (http://www.amazon.com/Practice-Programming-Professional-Computing/dp/020161586X), to become familiar with some of the more serious issues you'll encounter in day-to-day programming. Computer science courses don't usually emphasize code maintainability, etc.
  
• Go back to the programs you wrote a year ago and make them more efficient. Pay attention to what makes them more difficult or easy to work with a year later, to get practical experience with maintainability.
  
• Ask a friend to make a change to a program you've written, and tell you what was nice and what was difficult about doing so. If they're comfortable with it, ask to do the same to a program they've written.
  
• Find an open source project that you care about and that has a strong developer community, and offer to begin fixing bugs.

If you're just starting out, you will want to read Learn Python the Hard Way

If you want to learn to do thing the "pythonic" way, I've found that Idiomatic Python is a very good book.

If you already know Python and you want to learn about a wide area of subjects that can be dealt with in Python, I recommend the Python Cookbook. While some cookbooks are somewhat shallow, this book is very different. It provides extensive and very practical information even on complex topics such as multithreading (locking mechanisms, event handling, and so on). It's really worth it.

Also, don't forget to simply read and embrace the pep8 guidelines. They really help you produce good, maintainable Python code.

If you're serious about C++ programming and using the STL intelligently, I highly recommend getting a copy of Scott Meyers' Effective STL. He discusses exactly what you're asking about, e.g. when is a std::list better (or worse) than a std::vector, or how is a std::vector<bool> different than a std::bitset.

Actually all three of his books (Effective C++ and More Effective C++) are great reading if you haven't done so.

As for your question, if you need a thing to hold an array of something, std::vector is usually the go-to container for that.

If you're a Python programmer and you want to learn C, the best way to get started is by writing C extensions for Python. Find a C library that looks interesting and wire it up to CPython.

A baby step towards doing this is to use an FFI, like Python ctypes or Ruby/DL. You'll be working with raw memory and C function calls, but you'll be writing Python. Try to port your FFI-driven extension to native C.

I don't recommend just grabbing K&R and plowing through it. It's a great book but you're not going to retain anything by reading and then trying to write out the example programs. C didn't click for me until I had real projects to work on.

My recommended book is C Interfaces and Implementations (CII). What you're going to miss in C, right away, is the lack of a "list" or "array" type like you get in Python. CII will give you the list and the dict back, and, more importantly, show you how to structure your C code professionally and idiomatically.

1. if you want to LEARN how to write programs - read "Structure and interpretation of computer programms" on python - SICP (project: you will write an interpreter of "scheme" programming language on python)
   
   
2. if you want to TRAIN your OOP skills - Building Skills in Object-Oriented Design (you will code 3 games - roulette, craps and blackjack)
   
   
3. Helper resources on your way:
   3.1. Dive into python 3 (excellent python book)
   3.2. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Python! (best practice handbook to the installation, configuration, and usage of Python on a daily basis.)
   3.3 Python Language Reference ||| python standard library ||| python peps
   
   
4. if you want to read some good python code - look at flask web framework (if you are interested in web programming also look at fullstackpython
   
   
5. good but non-free books
   5.1. David Beazley "Python cookbook" (read code snippets on python)
   5.2. Dusty Phillips "Python 3 Object Oriented Programming" (learn OOP)
   5.3. Luciano Ramalho "Fluent python" (Really advanced python book. But I haven't read it YET)
   
   
6. daily challenges:
   6.1. r/dailyprogrammer (easy, intermediate and advanced challenges) (an easy challenge example)
   6.2. mega project list
   
   
7. BONUS
   From NAND to tetris ( build a general-purpose computer system from the ground up) (part1 and part2 on coursera)

• Python Cookbook (http://www.amazon.com/Python-Cookbook-Third-David-Beazley/dp/1449340377) is great for learning best practices and get exposure to the different parts of Python
  
• Python for Data Analysis (http://www.amazon.com/Python-Data-Analysis-Wrangling-IPython/dp/1449319793/) for a good (if a little dry at first) introduction to the libraries used for data analysis (e.g. IPython, NumPy, Pandas)
  
• Dive into Python 3 (http://www.amazon.com/Dive-Into-Python-Mark-Pilgrim/dp/1430224150/): an older book that has a good project-based approach to show you different aspects of Python

A handy book might be The C++ Standard Library: A Tutorial and Reference (2nd Edition).
As for something more visual experience I would recommend to watch Going Native 2012 and Going Native 2013 and maybe C9 Lectures: Stephan T. Lavavej - Core C++ then C9 Lectures: Stephan T Lavavej - Advanced STL. After you get a good understanding of new features will be good to read Effective Modern C++: 42 Specific Ways to Improve Your Use of C++11 and C++14, to understand how and when to use them even better.

Copy pasting my response to a similar question:

Edited to have more resources and be easier to read.

It's hard to draw the line between "essential" and "recommended." That depends a lot on what you want to do. So, I will present a rough outline of core topics covered in the 4 year CS program at my university (UC Berkeley). This is not a strict order of topics, but prerequisites occur before topics that depend on them.

Intro CS

Topics include Environments/Scoping, abstraction, recursion, Object oriented vs functional programming models, strings, dictionaries, Interpreters. Taught in Python.

The class is based on the classic MIT text, "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs." Of course, that book is from 1984 and uses Scheme, which many people don't want to learn due to its rarity in industry. We shifted recently to reading materials based on SICP, but presented in python. I believe this is the reading used now. This course is almost entirely posted online. The course page is visible to public, and has the readings, discussion slides / questions and solutions, project specs, review slides, etc. You can find it here.

Data Structures and basic algorithms

DS: Arrays, Linked Lists, Trees (Binary search, B, Spaly, Red-Black), Hash Tables, Stacks/Queues, Heaps, Graphs. Algorithms: Search (Breadth first vs depth first), Sorting (Bubble, radix, bucket, merge, quick, selection, insert, etc), Dijkstra's and Kruskal's, Big-O analysis.

This class uses two books: "Head First Java" and "Data Structures and Algorithms in Java" (any edition except 2). The class doesn't presupposed knowledge in any language, so the first portion is covering Object Oriented principles and Java from a java book (doesn't really matter which), then moving to the core topics of data structures and algorithms. The course page has some absolutely fantastic notes -- I skim through these before every interview to review. You can also check out the projects and homeworks if you want to follow along. The course page is available here (note that it gets updated with new semesters, and links will be removed -- download them soon if you want to use them).

Machine Structures (Intro Architecture)

Warehouse scale computing (Hadoop Map-Reduce). C language, basics of assemblers/compilers/linkers, bit manipulation, number representation. Assembly Language (MIPS). CPU Structure, pipelining, threading, virtual memory paging systems. Caching / memory hierarchy. Optimization / Performance analysis, parallelism (Open MP), SIMD (SSE Intrinsics).

This class uses two books: "The C Programming Language" and "Computer Organization and Design". This class is taught primarily in C, so the first few weeks are spent as a crash course in C, along with a discussion/project using Map-Reduce. From there in jumps into Computer Organization and Design. I personally loved the projects I did in this class. As with above, the lecture slides, discussion notes, homeworks, labs, solutions, and projects are all available on an archived course page.

Discrete Math / Probability Theory

Logic, Proofs, Induction, Modular Arithmetic (RSA / Euclid's Algorithm). Polynomials over finite fields. Probability (expectation / variance) and it's applicability to hashing. Distributions, Probabilistic Inference. Graph Theory. Countability.

Time to step away from coding! This is a math class, plain and simple. As for book, well, we really didn't have one. The class is based on a series of "Notes" developed for the class. When taken as a whole, these notes serve as the official textbook. The notes, homeworks, etc are here.

Efficient Algorithms and Intractable Problems

Designing and analyzing algorithms. Lower bounds. Divide and Conquer problems. Search problems. Graph problems. Greedy algorithms. Linear and Dynamic programming. NP-Completeness. Parallel algorithms.

The Efficient Algorithms class stopped posting all of the resources online, but an archived version from 2009 has homeworks, reading lists, and solutions. This is the book used.

Operating Systems and System Programming

Concurrency and Synchronization. Memory and Caching. Scheduling and Queuing theory. Filesystems and databases. Security. Networking.

The Operating Systems class uses this book, and all of the lectures and materials are archived here (Spring 2013).

Math

Those are the core classes, not including about 4 (minimum) required technical upper division electives to graduate with a B.A. in CS. The math required is:

• Calculus 1 and 2 (Calc AB/BC, most people test out, though I didn't)
  
  
• Multivariable calculus (not strictly necessary, just recommended)
  
  
• Linear Algebra and Differential Equations.
  
  Those are the core classes you can expect any graduate from my university to have taken, plus 4 CS electives related to their interests. If you could tell me more about your goals, I might be able to refine it more.

I don't know of many C++-specific materials for performance engineering. But a surprising ingredient is math. Take a look at Hacker's Delight. It's a bunch of bit twiddling hacks derived from immutable mathematical truths.

A lot of good optimizations stem from a good understanding of the computing fabric combined with an ability to formalize abstractions that mesh well with it.

I really wish I had started programming earlier. It's something that you easily have the capacity to learn at the age of 15 and you can teach yourself outside of school. I'd recommend getting some books from amazon. If you have a mac, learning iOS app development can be an awesome way to get started. You could get these 2 books (this and this) and be well on your way to developing iphone and ipad apps by the end of this school year.

Look at using the Eigen library for linear algebra in C++. Its used extensively in CV and AI settings, so there is a lot of info floating about it and lots of examples. It does take some getting used to coming from MATLAB though.

Here are some C++ books that have proven useful to me:
The Bible,
Very Useful,
My favorite data structures book,
[Maybe of interest] (https://www.amazon.com/Bundle-Algorithms-Parts-1-5-Fundamentals/dp/020172684X/ref=sr_1_25?ie=UTF8&qid=1484332390&sr=8-25&keywords=data+structures+in+C%2B%2B)

Also, keep in mind that the C++17 standard should be released this year, and there will be a new deluge of books.

Probably want to learn something about numerical analysis:
Numerical analysis

For vehicle dynamics and propulsion, are you thinking more FEA and CFD? If so, learning about GPU programming is probably more interesting since there is so much parallelization...
I recently picked this up but havent really worked through it yet...
but keep your expectations low, it is definitely non-trivial to try to spin your own packages, and it might be more worth your while to look at integrating with something like OpenFOAM for CFD, or to look into some of these packages for FEA. There are a lot of people who have spent a long time making these sorts of tools.

The stuff you are learning in CS class is definitely important, but it's orthogonal to the things you will need to learn in the industry.

Read "Code Complete" to get a head start on this stuff. - https://www.amazon.com/Code-Complete-Practical-Handbook-Construction/dp/0735619670

As far as some fun interviews with famous programmers, another great book is https://www.amazon.com/Practice-Programming-Addison-Wesley-Professional-Computing/dp/020161586X

First, be prepared to write code that sucks and is unmaintainable for a while. (This could be months or years.)

If you only know Java, then you'll need some C concepts. In particular, you need to become familiar with pointer arithmetic, avoiding buffer overruns, and manual memory management. (C++ has ways (RAII) to make manual memory management less error-prone, but you still need to understand what's going on.)

To learn the basics of the language, read The C++ Programming Language, Special Edition, by Bjarne Stroustrup.

Read a lot of things by Herb Sutter and Andrei Alexandrescu. I particularly recommend Modern C++ Design and Exceptional C++; I'm sure others in this thread can give you some good suggestions.

Finally, start writing code, and get it critically reviewed by someone who really knows C++. (I've known 2 or 3 such people in my career; they exist but are the exception, not the rule. Look for people who can explain all the things I listed, and more.)

(Edited to add The C++ Programming Language.)

Tried the Google one and couldn't stop cringing. Felt like I was in kindergarten watching the videos...

You need to know basic java programming to learn Android, but that should be easy if you already know some language.

Also didn't like that book, personally. It doesn't explain things really well. Currently reading The busy coders guide for Android programming and it seems really good.

I learned Java reading Java: A beginner's guide sixth edition and its a good beginner book, it's also serious unlike the "heads first java" which was full of lame jokes and I don't personally like that.

Should point out I'm a beginner myself so take this with a grain of salt.

Edit: Formating

If you're into building any games I would really recommend Beginning C++ Through Game Programming by Michael Dawson here. I have it and it's very good, one of the best. Even if you aren't really into gaming like myself, I would still suggest it.

These are books I read many years ago, they can be helpful but may be dated and will not include newer features. But as an introduction they worked well.

Thinking in C++ Voume 1 and 2 by Bruce Eckel

https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Vol-Introduction-Standard-2nd/dp/0139798099/ref=dp_ob_title_bk

https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-C-2-Practical-Programming/dp/0130353132/ref=pd_sbs_14_1

And Scott Meyers

Effective C++ - https://www.amazon.com/Effective-Specific-Improve-Programs-Designs/dp/0321334876/ref=pd_sbs_14_2

Effective STL - https://www.amazon.com/Effective-STL-Specific-Standard-Template/dp/0201749629

To do something "complex" (and perhaps by complex you mean "concrete" or "practical"?) with a programming language like python, you'll probably want to learn more about programming language libraries.

The libraries that accompany a programming language are what give it most of its practical power -- they are the bridge between the high-level programming language and the low-level operating system / hardware. You may want to look at some of these, or other libraries, just to get some ideas flowing: wxWidgets (and wxPython in particular, for designing window-based interfaces), OpenGL (for graphics), and ODBC database interfaces (for storing and retrieving large amounts of structured data).

Without an understanding of the OS or the available programming language libraries, you'll end up staying on the abstract side of things. I have a hunch that you might enjoy the book "The Elements of Computing Systems".

On the other hand, if what you want is more complexity while staying in the abstract realm, you could get a good book on Algorithms.

It's time complexity of algorithms. It's asking for big O, which is worst possible time your algorithm would take given a data input, usually n being the size of the array/list or whatever.

Hash tables are 0(1) because true hash tables uses a function to map 1:1 for all given inputs. For fun(y) => x, every x is generated by a unique y. If it's not a true hash table (ie not a 1:1 map), then you use chaining or bucketing. Chaining is guaranteed 0(n) time and uses no extra space and bucketing is guaranteed 0(n+t) where t is the largest bucket but requires extra space (tradeoffs!).

It's important because it's efficiency. You can program things 1000 ways. Given an input of 10 items, algorithm A (lets say runs in O(n)) and algorithm b (runs in O(n!)) may perform in nearly the same time and produce the same output. But given a list of 100000 items, algorithm B would take years to complete the task, when algorithm A would do it in ms.

Although I'm just about to graduate and don't have a real job yet, I recommend picking up something like this. You can find a pdf with minimal effort. The first few chapters really nail into it well.

This is fairly basic stuff, so I'm not sure if you should be trying challenges if you're not ready to do it. No worries, everyone started somewhere.

A good way to start is to find a good C++ book and go through it until you're more comfortable attacking the problem. I started with Beginning C++ Game Programming by Michael Dawson (or amazon). Most books cover what you need in the just first few chapters and I'm pretty sure this one does that as well. Plus you get some insight in game development, which is always fun to do. If all else fails, always remember google is your friend.

That said, I kind of get the idea that, because it's a pastebin, this was posted by a teacher of some sorts. I feel even the smallest hint would give away too much and it wouldn't be much of a challenge/test if others did the work for you. Learning to program is all about figuring things out yourself. There's very little, besides common pitfalls, that someone can teach you more or equally effective, as opposed to just doing it yourself.

Designing Data Intensive Applications is your ticket here. It takes you through a lot of the algorithms and architecture present in the distributed technologies out there.

In a data engineering role you will probably just be munging data through a pipeline making it useful for the analysts/scientists to use, so a book recommendation for that depends on the technology you will be using. Here are some of my favorite resources for the various tools I used in my experience as a Data Engineer:

• High Performant Spark
  
• acloud.guru
  
• Python Cookbook
  
  Good luck in your new position!

While it's not purely a data structures book (and may be a bit too close to a textbook for you), The Algorithm Design Manual is hands down the best Data Structures/Algorithm book I've seen.

It does a great job explaining the concepts and has some very helpful examples. If you're interviewing, it also has several exercises and interview questions for each topic.

And that is exactly why I recommend reading these books to people. Information online can often be misleading, wrong, old, or all of the above, at least in a book which is praised by so many people, you know that the info which you are getting is top value. I know that learing C++ can be a bit difficult, but remember that you do not need to know all of it at once (heck - nobody knows all of C++, and even Template Metaprogramming was kind of discovered by accident ). I hear that Accelerated C++ is a good book to start from if you already know some programming in another language. C++ Primer Plus is huge, but also good.

Discovering Statistics Using R by Andy Field is probably your best bet. It's pretty comprehensive in terms of what it covers and is easy (and enjoyable) to follow along with and understand.

1. Learn C++ better
   
2. Learn the basic of game development. I don't recommend a full fledged engine like Unreal 4; yet.
   
   This was my first C++ book:
   https://www.amazon.com/Beginning-C-Through-Game-Programming/dp/1305109910/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1502459253&sr=8-1&keywords=game+development+c%2B%2B
   
   You'll make text based games.
   
   As for a game development library, I'd recommend RayLib:
   https://github.com/raysan5/raylib
   
   As it's very simple. It doesn't have a lot of complex things provided for you already (such as Scene graphs and whatnot). You'll need to build that stuff for yourself. But it does give you the basics of graphics, audio, input handling, etc.
   
   I'd say once you feel comfortable with those two things, you should then move onto something like Unreal.

Yo, I just finished working my way through my first game dev book (which took me far too long, 3 months, I burned out after pulling all day sessions for a week, woops) and now I have two questions:

1. What book should I move on to next to build on the foundations set by those books? There were one or two things that were "beyond the scope of this book" so I want to fill in any blanks I might have.
   
   
2. I also want to just dive right in and try to apply some of this knowledge to actually building a game, but the book only contains information that would really be useful to text-based games as it didn't mention anything about engines, etc. So what's a good engine for mobile games (I want to start with something basic, and if it makes a difference I lean toward android) with a lot of documentation and tutorials to fill in any blanks I might have?
   
   I'm 29, so I started too late, but I'm excited to get going. Should have acted on this years ago, but I foolishly let other people tell me what I could and couldn't do. Advice to any kids that might be reading: Never do that. Anyone ever tells you they can't help you with the path you choose but "here's some leaflets on business classes as that's a much wiser choice," tell them to bugger off.

Huh. After reading this thread, I'm pretty happy that Stack Overflow did not exist when I started programming in the early 2000s. All I found were sketchy pay-for-answers sites, which I did not trust (I was also a broke 13 year old), so I was forced to go buy a giant book on C++ and read it all the way through. this one

That gave me a great base of patterns to work with and I was able to not pay any attention in college because I already learned most of the material.

I do love Stack Overflow for shit like "How do I fix this obscure OpenGL error?" though, it has become an irreplaceable tool in my toolset.

Ignore the people who are stating that learning c++ is some daunting, difficult task. It isn't. If you have learned mathematics, you will be able to learn c++. Both are languages used to convey reasoning. Mathematics and C++ both have grammar to follow and rules for turning some statement into another -- you won't find things very foreign if you look at it from this perspective.

Also, you should avoid videos and such, and just go start writing and compiling C++. You need a good starting point for the language of course, and the core material usually recommended is The C++ Programming Language by Bjarne Stroustrup.

The rest of your reading material should be reading well formed c++ code. Read the source code of popular, well documented projects. Read the Boost libraries, read the source of Qt, read as much C++ as you can get your hands on. Try to understand it. If you find something you don't understand, go look it up. Ask other programmers about it.

Take things in small chunks and if you get overwhelmed just take a step back a bit and write something simple that you can grasp. Create small programming problems for yourself to solve and play with them -- do the same things you did while you learned mathematics.

Use these ebooks. They're brilliant:

First: Learn some Objective-C
Second: Start with iOS

It's very important that you don't give up when learning to write software. Keep chiseling at it and you will be able to create amazing apps.

Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming

Very practical and useful to understand the different programming paradigms. If you want to make sense of functional vs object oriented, and more importantly how different code architecture helps you solve different problems, this one really helps. The real surprise is that it does all that using a single language developed to be multi-paradigm - called Oz -, which really opens your eyes (at least did for me) of what programming languages can be and how these paradigms can be interlaced.

Official website

Read books. It might be boring, but a lot more informational than watching a youtube video.

If you already know how to program in another (preferably OOP) language there's The C++ Programming Language or C++ Primer if you want to learn C++11 (not to be confused with C++ Primer Plus, which is a different book 'series')

If you don't know how to program and you want to learn C++ for game development there's Beginning C++ Game Programming, which starts at the beginning (variables are one of the first things explained). After that book you should read up Introduction to Algorithms to make sure you're not writing horrible inefficient programs. Then there's Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software to teach you more about certain patterns used in programs design (needed when using Ogre3D for example. Ogre3D was 90% magic to me until I read about Design Patterns. :p As alternative to DP:EoROOS there's Head First Design Patterns, but it's Java-centric which is a whole other beast than C++.

After those books there's this Stackoverflow thread. Read the first answer (the gigantic list of books). The thread used to be a ton of comments (with the most votes comments on top), but all anwers got copied to the first comment, so it's all sorted on votes. Code Complete (2nd edition) was the most upvoted one, The Pragmatic Programmer was the 2nd most upvoted one, etc.

Then there's this Stackoverflow thread, which is more C++ centric.

I hope this helps :)

Before you read any iPhone-specific development books, you're going to want a good understanding of the C and Objective-C language. Trust me, building a good foundation will help you immensely down the road. I can't recommend this book highly enough. http://amzn.com/0321706285

I would recommend saving the money and learn from books. As said before most employers don't care about certifications and if they do, you probably don't want to work there.

The C++ Programming Language is written by the inventor of C++ Bjarne Stroustrup and arguably the best introductary book out there.

If you already know core programming principles by heart i would recommend Accelerated C++ .

I'm currently working through the Big Nerd Ranch books which are fantastic. They have such a good way of teaching - you are constantly writing code and there are a lot of challenges for you to complete at the end of chapters. I picked them up after recommendations from many other redditors.

They have two books:

• Objective-C Programming - for those with no previous Objective-C experience.
  
• iOS Programming - for those who have worked through the above book &or those who already have a good understanding of Obj-C.
  
  I started with the first and would definitely recommend both.

I've read both the "Pickaxe" book and "The Ruby Programming Language" (co-authored by Matz and _why), and I have to say TRPL is much better.

It's a no-BS book about every single Ruby detail. Covers all the quirks and features I didn't even know existed. I definitely owe my knowledge of Ruby directly to it, but my introduction to the Pickaxe (only (free) book at the time). Pickaxe may be good to start with, but you can learn the same from TRPL and TRPL provides a much better reference later on.

I'd strongly recommend The Practice of Programming. It's about structuring code cleanly and readably in general. It's something I wish most programmers would read.

https://www.amazon.com/Practice-Programming-Addison-Wesley-Professional-Computing/dp/020161586X

It's full of great advice, and is a fairly light read.

If you're looking for a great beginner book, I personally recommend 'Beginning C++ Through Game Programming' by Michael Dawson. Don't let the name throw you off, it's just a different styled intro book and still teaches you all the main concepts. It's pretty much starting off with printing 'Game Over!' rather than 'Hello World!' https://www.amazon.com/Beginning-C-Through-Game-Programming/dp/1305109910/ref=dp_ob_image_bk

Besides what has been mentioned, these two are also good:

• C Interfaces and Implementations: Techniques for Creating Reusable Software
  : teaches good design practices in C.
  
  
• Writing solid code: focuses on debugging, also filled with interesting anecdotes.

This kind of stuff is available in painful detail in Josuttis' book, but there is a fair bit of "other stuff" in there.

That said, better than the fish book for someone who wants just the good stuff would be Effective STL and/or Standard C++ IOStreams & Locales.

Since you're on a Mac, if you're looking at OS X and iOS development, I'd recommend Objective-C.

As for books on the subject, I would recommend Objective-C Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide and for you to also read the free online tutorial BecomeAnXcoder.

You might also want to look into getting Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X and iOS Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide should you want to further your Cocoa and iOS knowledge respectively.

---

As for Mac IDEs, for Objective-C or C++, look at XCode (take a look in the Mac App Store).

For Java, I think Eclipse is pretty much the only option?

Highly agree. Buy a kindle and read anything people you trust recommend.

I would recommend one javascript specific book, actually: http://www.amazon.com/Effective-JavaScript-Specific-Software-Development/dp/0321812182/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1414608930&sr=8-1&keywords=Effective+JavaScript%3A+68+Specific+Ways+to+Harness+the+Power..

I've been doing this a long time and there's still some stuff in there for me to learn every time I flip through it.

Well, it's one year since I started my Java programmer career and I think you should start with basic and then decide what you want to do in future (there is lots of path to take).This worked for me:

1. Get fammiliar with concepts in this book Java: A Beginner's Guide, Sixth Edition. There are basic which u will need everywhere and for me a form was really easy to follow.
   
2. Try to create some basic game in console. For example I did some basic "Fallout style" adventure. Important is to try coding yourself and not copy/paste and try to finnish a project.
   
3. Choose a path you wanna take. Do you want desctop app, android app or you want to work in a enterprise. Find a technologie which suit your purpose and focus on it. Don't try to learn everything, because then u will know nothing properly.
   
4. Try to do something like DVD rental or anything where you will have to implement CRUD operations, use REST API and get your hands dirty with some MVC concepts.

At last, a question in my domain! Wikipedia actually provides a very good beginner's introduction to computational complexity theory. You should start at O(n) notation (big-O notation) and go from there to the articles on computational complexity.

There are also wonderful books like Dasgupta, Papadimitriou, and Vazirani's textbook "Algorithms". The latter third of the book will teach you about computational complexity theory, but the first two-thirds will teach you much of what you need to know to understand it. http://www.amazon.com/Algorithms-Sanjoy-Dasgupta/dp/0073523402

If you have any questions as you read feel free to PM me directly.

My algorithms class presupposed that I took linear algebra, I think. I think you'll need to be able to do maths, but they taught me the maths I needed to know as I went along. It depends on the course, though. Here's the book we used in class. Here's its home page, but the link seems to be broken. It should be online for free. For example, I found another copy here. Here's the PDF Also a free book on linear algebra.

I highly recommend The Practice of Programming as a great beginner's book on how to look at writing programs.

But mostly, write code, and read other's good code. Since I mostly work in the C world, I'd suggest the Lua interpreter source code and the Plan 9 source code as examples.

Once you finish that, you will be ready to program in C++. The next step is to get a deep understanding of C++. For that Bjarne Stroustrup's "The C++ Programming Language" is the best. These are the only 2 books you will need... a quick-start book and a get-deep-understanding book.

Of course, after reading those 2, there are plenty of other good books that you can read to hone your C++ skills, learn more about STLs, etc.

This book is highly recommended: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Beginning-C-Through-Game-Programming/dp/1435457420/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1398273399&sr=8-2&keywords=beginning+C%2B%2B+game+programming

But to be honest, the best way to learn is by doing - so google for some simple C++ examples, download the source code, compile, fiddle, recompile, test, keep adding stuff...

I liked Beginning C++ Through Game Programming. Note that it is very basic, so you'll be creating text/console games. It's best to get the basics right before adding on graphics, audio, etc. From this you could move on to Unity, Unreal, OpenGL, etc.

http://www.theodinproject.com/ was a great resource for learning web development. I really liked this book by David Herman for more advanced JS techniques: http://www.amazon.com/Effective-JavaScript-Specific-Software-Development/dp/0321812182. Also if your looking into Algorithms, this is probably THE book your looking for http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Algorithms-Edition-Thomas-Cormen/dp/0262033844

First note that Career/Job/Market is quite different from Knowledge/Intellectual satisfaction. So you have to keep "earning money" separate from "gaining knowledge" but do both parallely. If you are one of the lucky few who has both aligned in a particular job, you have got it made. Mostly that is never the case and hence you have to work on your Motivation/Enthusiasm and keep hammering away at the difficult subjects. There are no shortcuts :-)

I prefer Books to the Internet for study since they are more coherent and less distracting, allowing you to focus better on a subject. Unless newer editions are reqd. buy used/older editions to save money and build a large library. So here is a selection from my library (in no particular order);

• Digital Design and Computer Architecture
  
  
• Foundations of Analog and Digital Electronic Circuits
  
  
• Introduction to Embedded Systems
  
  
• Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software
  
  
• The Elements of Computing Systems
  
  
• Foundations of Multithreaded, Parallel and Distributed Programming
  
  
• The Practice of Programming
  
  
• The C programming language
  
  
• The C Companion
  
  
• Expert C Programming
  
  
• C Interfaces and Implementation
  
  
• Data Structures and Program Design in C
  
  
• The Unix Programming Environment
  
  
• Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective 3rd edition is 64-bit, 2nd edition is mostly 32-bit and a little 64-bit while 1st edition is all 32-bit.
  
  
• The C++ Programming Language 4th edition
  
  
• Discovering Modern C++
  
  
• C++ Templates: The complete guide
  
  
• Modern C++ design
  
  
• Scientific and Engineering C++
  
  
• Advanced C++ programming styles and idioms
  
  
• Design Patterns
  

I like Discovering Statistics using R . Great book for learning the basics of hypothesis testing, a little bit of math, and you learn how to do it in R; not to mention there are a few bits you’ll chuckle at. There are also other books for other programs in this series (SPSS, SAS).

This is wonderful, thank you. There are some lines that I haven't learned yet and so I'll make sure to research on them. I'm currently using this book as a teaching guide, do you have any other suggestions for books I can use?

Haven't read it, but this book has good reviews on amazon: link

There are some others. Look them up and see which one you like the most.

Someone already suggested codeacademy, another one to check out is https://www.udemy.com/java-tutorial/.

Note: If you are looking for a teaching tool for people who have never coded before, always check to see if one of the first programs (if not the first) it has you code is a "Hello World" program (or equivalent). It is a simple program that just prints "Hello World" on the screen that is the first program most people learn to code. If the guide is starting with something more complex than "Hello World" it may not be for absolute beginners. Just something to look out for.

If you are OK paying for a book, a good book in the beginners section would be Java: A beginner's Guide from Oracle. Start with the two free sources mentioned first as the book jumps into more advance topics more quickly.

Steve Yegge's 5 Essential Areas

When I was preparing to interview I broke up the studying into the 5 areas mentioned in Steve's post. From my experience, the two most critical things are:

• Writing reasonable code on demand (like on the whiteboard)
  
• Knowing the core data structures (including time and space complexity)
  
  If you have never written code on a whiteboard, you need to practice -- it isn't natural and will almost certainly trip you up. For the data structures, try explaining something like a heap or a map a friend who has no background in CS. It will get you comfortable talking about that kind of stuff and also help cement your knowledge. This book is excellent as a resource.

I would recommend Discovering Statistics Using R. It goes through the math of the stats in a pretty solid way with example experiments and available data files if you want to work along with it. I have used the SPSS version with my intro and intermediate stats classes, so using it with R would be great. Plus, Fields is funny as hell.

Go nuts.

It isn't particularly enlightening; reading the STL itself never is. It is highly optimized, favoring brevity and efficiency over readability.

You'd be better off reading something like this -- I haven't read that particular book, but the author is well known in the C++ community.

Study design patterns and read books by the masters.. Find the books that are recognized by the community as "the best". For example "Effective Java" is one of the best books on writing Java beyond the basics.

The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master


http://www.amazon.com/Pragmatic-Programmer-Journeyman-Master/dp/020161622X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1374154408&sr=1-1&keywords=pragmatic+programmer

Design Patterns


http://www.amazon.com/Design-Patterns-Elements-Object-Oriented-ebook/dp/B000SEIBB8


http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/020161586X/ref=oh_details_o05_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I just picked up Pro ASP.NET MVC 5 by Adam Freeman. I'm a chapter or two in, so far so good. It's the currently the best selling ASP.NET book on Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/Pro-ASP-NET-Experts-Voice-ASP-Net/dp/1430265299

First don't think of this as "DBA" stuff - you're a developer, you need to know database technology, period. Read this rant by Dennis Forbes in response to Digg's CTO's complaints about databases it's very reminiscent of TFA.

Read Data and Reality by the late William Kent (here's a free copy) and get a fundamental understanding of "information" vs. "data". Then read Information Modeling and Relational Databases to pickup a couple practical approaches to modeling (ER & OR). Now read The Datawarehouse Toolkit to learn dimensional modeling and when to use it. Practice designing effective models, build some production databases from scratch, inherit some, revisit your old designs, learn from your mistakes, write lots and lots and lots of SQL (if you want to get tricky with SQL I suggest to pickup Celko's SQL for smarties - it's like the Hacker's Delight for SQL).

Many strange models you may encounter in the wild are actually optimizations. Some are premature, some outright stupid, and some brilliant, if you want to be able to tell one from the other then you're going to dive deep into internals. Do this generically with Modern Information Retrieval and Managing Gigabytes then for specific RDBMSs Pro SQL Server Internals, PostgreSQL Internals, Oracle CORE, etc.

Reflect on how awesome practically every modern RDBMS is as a great technological achievement for mankind and how wonderful it is to be standing on the shoulders of giants. Roll your eyes a little bit whenever you overhear another twenty-something millenial fresh CS graduate who skipped every RDBMS elective bleat about NoSQL, Mongo, whatever. Try not to fly into murderous rage when another loud-mouthed know-nothing writes at length about how bad RDBMS technology is when they couldn't be bothered to learn the most basic requisite skills and knowledge to use one competently.

Sometimes there are language specific ideas there, but in general those are much more general. This is older, but still very good. It's also by Kernighan and Pike, so the ideals there are certainly reflected somewhat in Go.

https://www.amazon.com/Practice-Programming-Addison-Wesley-Professional-Computing/dp/020161586X/

A few more to consider:
A recent book that looks like fun is the Nature of Computation.
Sipser's book on theory of computation is good.
Algorithms by Dasgupta, Papadimitriou, and Vazirani is a very accessible algorithms book, as is Skiena. CLRS is a good reference, but dull as a read.
Comprehensive Mathematics for Computer Scientists volumes one and two might be interesting to look at.

There are two good texts that I'd recommend, each have their own bright spots. Pro MVC 5 and Professional Asp.net MVC 5.

I spent money on a book in attempts to kinda force myself to sit down, it hasn't gone too well. But when I do, it feels more scholarly so I am more focused on learning?

I got this one for free, it's made by the dude who made C++ himself, and is more accessible than expected!

And I bought this one, since it felt more activity based!

There is also the follow-up More Effective C++ which I highly recommend as well.

Pro ASP.NET MVC 5 https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1430265299

I'm working through that one right now and so far it's great.

(Not to be confused with Professional ASP.NET MVC, which may also be great. I haven't tried it)

Hackers Delight
Talks about some stuff and things that you might enjoy.
(Not a hacking book)
https://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Delight-2nd-Henry-Warren/dp/0321842685

The best way I would suggest is buying a starters Java book online. I'm taking my AP Computer Science class as well and my teacher is also pretty difficult. He goes quick so I definitely recommend trying this. Also, try Khan Academy, PracticeIT, and CodingBat.

Ninja Edit: Grammar.

My program requires a number of stats classes and my advisor requires a number more than that. My program also offers a few data science-related specializations, which are, of course, optional, but great.

For some independent learning, Andy Field's Discovering Statistics Using R -- https://www.amazon.com/Discovering-Statistics-Using-Andy-Field/dp/1446200469/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1538060236&sr=8-1&keywords=discovering+statistics+using+r -- and datacamp.com are both handy resources.

This looks like a very early draft of this book;

http://www.info.ucl.ac.be/~pvr/book.html
http://www.amazon.com/Concepts-Techniques-Models-Computer-Programming/dp/0262220695

This looks like such a nice book, that I will buy it.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0387948600 -- great book. I used it when studying for my Google interview. The first quarter or so is theory and the rest is just a BUNCH of algorithms, what problems they are good for, what their trade offs are, etc. I'd recommend it.

In addition, he co-wrote The UNIX Programming Environment and The Practice of Programming with Rob Pike and The Elements of Programming Style with PJ Plauger. I've never read the Practice of Programming (add it to the wish list) but the other two books are fantastic. The Elements of Programming Style is somewhat dated (code is in PL/I and Fortran, and it discourages things like goto which we all already know is bad) but a lot of it is still relevant and worth picking up a used copy if you can find it.

This book is a amazing:
Discovering Statistics Using R
by Andy Field

If you are doing self-study, it is easy to lose momentum. This book is hilarious, personal, and transcends the textbook genre.

Amazon Link

My favorite tome:
Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming is 930 pages and worth every page, IMO. A lot of it can be read without the other parts too making it more like 5 books in one.

Chris Wellons blog series is good for minimalist C library design, and he has excellent examples on his Github too: https://nullprogram.com/blog/2018/06/10/

For a more opaque approach, check out: https://www.amazon.com/Interfaces-Implementations-Techniques-Creating-Reusable/dp/0201498413

Some books I enjoyed:

The Algorithm Design Manual by Steve S. Skiena, $61.15

Real Time Rendering, 3rd. Edition by Tomas Akenine-Moller, Eric Haines, Natty Hoffman, $71.20

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, by Hal Abelson's, Jerry Sussman and Julie Sussman, Free

Clean Code by Robert C. Martin, $37.85

> How the heck am I supposed to learn STL, when and how to use it?

Books are good! They can cover the material more efficiently than video can, and it's easy to adapt if the material is being covered too quickly or too slowly. I don't have a personal recommendation, but a quick Amazon search came up with The C++ Standard Library: A Tutorial and Reference (2nd Edition) which seems to be well-regarded. Too expensive? A used copy of the 1st edition is only a few bucks.

> Maybe pick up a book and try to learn a little bit of R this summer?

Coursera has online courses if you want learn R and how to do statistics using R.

If you prefer a book, try "Discovering Statistics Using R" by Andy Field. I'm using it to self-study right now and I highly recommend it. It really explains statistical concepts well and it's very easy to read. Although it does sacrifice a lot of mathematics, you could compensate for it when you take up your statistics subject.

I do have to say that I've already taken up Econ Statistics and Econometrics (I had a horrible time however). Also, I've taken up the R course in Coursera so I'm not sure if my experience with the book is the same as yours. Read a couple of chapters and see if it is to your liking.

It's been too long since i read Programming Perl but "The Ruby Programming Language" is the book that i use the most.

While the Pickaxe is good, you can't beat the pedigree of "The Ruby Programming Language" what with Yukihiro Matsumoto aka Matz aka The guy who created the ruby programming language in the first place, co-writing the book along with Mr.Flanahan.

Amazon_Link

This, this and the corresponding book. No in the language you want but they are just the best in business.