Missing-semester Alternatives

missing-semester reviews and mentions

• Ask HN: Book recommendations for CS fundamentals for a self-taught programmer?
  2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 19 Sep 2024

  The recommendations in this thread so far do suggest a lot of nice books - CS:APP and SICP - but given your description of previous struggles with more academic stuff, along with the request for "practical examples or projects", I'm not sure they are right for you. By all means take a look, but don't be discouraged if they don't fit what you're after. An algorithm book with a somewhat different tone that you might check out is Skiena's Algorithm Design Manual. I've been reading Ousterhout's A Philosophy of Software Design recently and that might also be something that would interest you.

  However, I might suggest that books and theoretical knowledge are not the main things you need right away. I moved into software engineering after a long time in science. I had done plenty of coding, and had a pretty decent amount of theoretical knowledge, but there was still quite a bit of practical adjustment. I really like Rzor's suggestion of https://missing.csail.mit.edu to start with.

  Beyond that, I think maybe I would find some specific codebases that you'd like to understand better, and start with reading more of those. I feel like that's often better than books for picking up idiomatic usage and patterns in given domains. As you hit specific barriers, I think it will be much easier to pick up the intrinsic motivation to dip back into theoretical knowledge at that point.

• MIT: The Missing Semester of Your CS Education
  1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 31 Jul 2024
• The number of CS grads who don't even know basic Git commands is astounding
  2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 15 Jun 2024

  It is more than just that. I used to recommend a lot the MIT's Missing Semester of your CS Education https://missing.csail.mit.edu/ to people that is not familiar with some topics at work.

• Ask HN: I want to learn to use the terminal, where do I start
  5 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 24 Apr 2024

  The missing semester of your cs education

  https://missing.csail.mit.edu/

• Please advise, still struggling intensely
  2 projects | /r/OMSCS | 11 Dec 2023

  You mentioned having issues with accessory concepts so perhaps this might help: https://missing.csail.mit.edu/. There's also a chapter on git

• Curso del IPN
  1 project | /r/taquerosprogramadores | 7 Dec 2023
• CS2030S and CS2040S advice
  3 projects | /r/nus | 6 Dec 2023

  https://missing.csail.mit.edu/ is a good way to pass the Dec-Jan break if you want to prep for CS2030S + some more general stuff.

• I cancelled my Replit subscription
  2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 19 Nov 2023

  Reflecting a little bit more I don't think it was replit's fault, per-say. But that change should have been made together with a larger adjustment to the program. Like adding a class/unit in the style of [the missing semester](https://missing.csail.mit.edu/) to make sure people came away with a good range of intuitions.

• Advice to a Novice Programmer
  2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 25 Oct 2023

  From MJD's post: I think CS curricula should have a class that focuses specifically on these issues, on the matter of how do you actually write software?

  But they never do.

  FWIW, MIT's "The Missing Semester of Your CS Education" attempts to deal with this lack, though, even there, it's an unofficial course taught between terms, during MIT's IAP -- Independent Activities Period[1] -- and not an actual CS course.

  [0] https://missing.csail.mit.edu/

  [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditions_and_student_activit...

• School of SRE: Curriculum for onboarding non-traditional hires and new grads
  2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 9 Sep 2023
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