self-teaching

What books should I read to have an undergraduate education in Computer Science?

I've always been a largely independent learner gleaning what I can from Wikipedia and various books. However, I fear that I may have biased my self-education by inadvertent omission of topics and concepts. My goal is to teach myself the equivalent of an undergraduate degree in Computer Science from a top university (doesn't matter which ...

How to get up to speed on modern Java as a C++ programmer?

I program in C++ for a living. My last serious exposure to Java was in 1996. What's a good self-study way to get up to date on modern Java? (Bonus points if it can be done online.) ...

What is your preferred pastime programming project?

By pastime programming project, I refer to any programming you do that's in your spare time and not work-related per se, although what is learned can be applied to work. I like using Processing to create generative illustrations. I do front-end web development for my work, and as you may have guessed, find it far less interesting. I am ...

How do you manage your continuing education?

My guess is that many of us would count ourselves among a particular sort of group -- developers interested in become better developers. I'm interested in getting a better sense of how you approach your continuing education. Our field is evolving at a ridiculous pace. Just taking the statistically likely example, if you happen to work...

What's a good way to study algorithms?

Duplicate of: How to get started on algorithms After overloading my classes one fateful semester in my college days, I ended up dropping my algorithms course and never taking it again. I'd like to finally fix this by doing some self study, but I'm wondering how best to approach it. I've got a few algorithm texts, notably the CLR...

Good Tutorials in general

Can someone tell me why there are so little good programming tutorials in general? I know one site, and that's for flash, but I don't use that much flash: http://www.gotoandlearn.com/ I think it's a nice place. All tutorials are video, you see it happening on the screen as they explain it and most of them are pretty clear on what's hap...

Performance issues with empty ";" statement in C#

Platform: .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 on x32 Are there any performance issues regarding leaving an empty statement (";", by itself) in code? And to be marked as an answer would you also teach a man (me? and other people reading this) to fish? Meaning, how to figure out there is a performance issue with it? ...

Learning how to do programming in school and learning programming outside of school

Hope this thread won't be closed as fast as the other one, because I'm interested about your opinions about what school contribute when it comes to learn programming. I plan to do a thesis in that area of programming in school-context, and would appreciate your opinions. Please tell me your experience of learning programming in school c...

C++ as a first language

I've been self-learning C++ for about 4 months now. I'm enjoying it, and I think I'm doing quite well. However, an answer to a question of mine got me thinking that I might be setting myself up for a fall. So, what do people here think about C++ as a first language to learn? And is it worth me just carrying on now that I've made a good ...

I know HTML; what web programming language should I learn now?

So far I have taught myself HTML by coding in Publisher 97 and using W3-Schools. I have picked up small amounts of CSS and PHP. What Should I learn after learning HTML? And what is the best editor for what I'm going to do?(Windows, Linux) ...

Three most critical programming concepts

I know this has probably been asked in one form or fashion, but I wanted to pose it once again within the context of my situation (and probably others here at Stack Overflow). I made a career change to Software Engineering some time ago without having an undergraduate degree or graduate degree in Computer Science. I've supplemented my ...

I want to learn COM. How should I proceed?

Hello Guys, I am a fresh graduate with a bachelor in Computer Science. As most school today, they are no longer teaching students C or advance C++ (only an Introductory course in C++... With lessons up to Pointers). The standard programming language prescribed in the curriculum is C# (.NET stack). Just recently, I got hired as a junior...

Want to write an eBook collection manager in Python. What do I need to learn?

Hello everyone, I have been teaching myself the rudiments of Python and have reached a stage where I would like to tackle a project of increasing complexity in order to "scratch an itch". I have a large eBook collection (several gigabytes, organized in folders according to topic, mostly .pdf files with the occasional .djvu, .html, and ...

Good resources for learning Objective-C

I have developed for a number of years in Java, primarily for Linux and Windows. During my undergrad and grad school times, I also did quite a bit in C and C++. I have recently (in the last year and a half) started using primarily Apple computers at home, and am interested in exploring their Xcode development environment. I am interes...

High Speed Development refresher

Hi All, I am curious about how some of you refresh your coding skills. For various reason, my dev skills have been idle for the last few months and was wondering what suggestions there where to dust the rust off. I used to be a dotnet developer (C#). I am currently working through the code Kata from codekata.pragprog.com. I am also ...

Learning web-based programming for the C++ programmer

I want to create a web-interface for a project I had in mind for a while. I have been programming in C++ (plus HLSL) professionally for the past five years, and learned various others in university (Java, VHDL, numerous assembly languages). I am searching for good resources to compare the different possibilities for web programming (ja...

What does this SQL Database error mean in C#?

I was adding a service-based database, but I got this message: A network-related or instance-specific error occurred while establishing a connection to the SQL server. The server was not found or was not accessible. Verify that the instance name is correct and that SQL Server is configured to allow remote connections. (provider: SQL Net...

How difficult is it for an old-school programmer to pick up an FPGA kit and make something useful with it?

I'm an old, old, old coder. (How old? I've used paper tape in anger.) I've programmed in a lot of languages and under a lot of paradigms (spaghetti, structured, object-oriented, functional and a smattering of logical). I'm getting bored. FPGAs look interesting to me. I have the crazy notion of resurrecting some of the ancient hardw...

What sorts of things should I build when teaching myself a new language?

Possible Duplicates: Projects for learning a new language What would you write if you wanted to learn a new language? I'm a rather junior programmer. I did a program in college on programming, so I've been exposed to a bunch of different languages (C++, Java, VB.Net, even COBOL) and I understand the basic concepts of buildin...

In .NET, Does SQL have any part in game development? Is it used for anything?

I'm a self teaching beginner, and I know absolutely nothing about the technical specs of computers/programming in general. I am using a C# book to learn it, and I mainly just want to learn everything that relates to game development, if something has no part in game development/no use in it. I won't bother learning it for the time being....