Teach Yourself Computer Science

Re:Teach Yourself Computer Science by JackMorgan on Sunday June 21, 2020 @07:31AM (#23591415)

I have used similar lists to go from almost entirely self taught to having finished a half dozen CS and FP courses at my own pace. At one point in my life I was keeping up a GitHub streak every day by just pushing a couple exercise answers to a private repo. After a while, I really had to go looking to find challenging enough work to keep me engaged. Books with homework like SICP, FP in Scala, Let Over Lambda, Software Foundations, Haskell from First Principles, Land of Lisp, and Progamming Languages all really offered a lot of homework to keep the streak up.

The streak really is a super power for self study of any form. It's so hard to ignore a 1600+ day streak even when you don't feel like it.

When Github took that streak counter down, I was crushed, combined with me taking a management heavy job (encouraging me to read a lot about soft skills), it really collapsed the whole system for me. One day I'd love to pick it back up, but right now I'm doing the same thing with violin as an adult learner, so that's taking up that time I'd otherwise spend on CS.

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Re:Teach Yourself Computer Science by celicaraptor on Sunday June 21, 2020 @12:10PM (#23592826)

Learning violin might help with CS more than you can imagine. Giving yourself a break from something you have been doing for years/decades is absolutely necessary and will get you more excited to get back to learning about CS and prevent burnout. I know i am certainly that way. However, YMMV.

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Re:Teach Yourself Computer Science by sheveksmath on Sunday June 21, 2020 @01:46PM (#23593716)

There's an app you may enjoy called Loop Habit Tracker. I used it to keep track of streaks for things I couldn't as easily track through other means. Its pretty amazing how just seeing your streaks can be so effective in building habits.

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