Название: The Computer Science Book : A complete introduction to computer science in one book
Автор: Tom Johnson
Издательство: Leanpub
Год: 2021-03-04
Страниц: 248
Язык: английский
Формат: pdf (true), epub
Размер: 14.6 MB

Learn the computer science foundations you need to jump start your career. Ten chapters covering all the career-essential topics. Become confident in computer architecture, networking, databases and much more.

Welcome to The Computer Science Book! This book contains ten chapters covering the main areas of a computer science degree. Together they will give you a comprehensive introduction to computer science. I learned to program through self-study and then attending a bootcamp. My bootcamp did a wonderful job of preparing me for work but there simply wasn’t time to dig under the surface of web programming. When I started my first developer job I was painfully aware of how little I knew. There were things I’d heard of but had never had time to investigate properly. That was fine – at least I knew about them. Pausing to think more deeply, I realised I was programming this thing that was mostly a black box. Who knew what was in it? How did my code actually get to the processor and how did the processor know what to do with it? How did the server know when requests came and how did they get there? It felt like I was building a career on sand.

Clearly, the solution was to study the computer science fundamentals I was missing. In some ways computer science is very easy to study independently. There is a huge wealth of resources freely available on the Internet. But that abundance can be paralysing if you don’t know where to start. Which textbooks are the most useful? Do I really need to know everything they teach or are some bits not so relevant now? In what order should I study topics? The Computer Science Book is intended to guide you through the field of computer science. The ten chapters chart a sensible route through the subject, each one building on the concepts introduced in the preceding. Each chapter is focused on delivering the essential knowledge that will help you improve as a developer. I’ve generally erred on the side of the practical rather than the theoretical. Nevertheless in some places the abstract theory is unavoidable – but very interesting! Each chapter also includes a further reading section giving suggestions for independent study and introducing deeper topics that didn’t fit in the chapter.

The simple truth is that to be a great programmer, capable of handling anything that might come up, you need a solid foundation in computer science. You need to know how the computer works, what its capabilities are and what its limitations are. But learning computer science is difficult. Things are even tougher if you’re learning by yourself and in your own time.

Where should you start? How do you chart a path through the whole of computer science, studying topics in the right order? How can you possibly work your way through the dozens of “classic”, doorstop textbooks? I know because I’ve been there.

The topics you need to succeed
Lots of computer science textbooks try to be comprehensive. That’s why they’re 1,000 pages long and weigh a tonne. The problem is that without an instructor it’s difficult to guide your own reading. The Computer Science Book is different. It’s a highly selective, single-volume introduction to the whole of computer science. I’m not promising comprehensiveness. I’m promising a complete, practical introduction to the computer science knowledge you need to be a great programmer.

Before adding even the tiniest thing I challenged myself: “do people need to know this?”. Only the essential made the cut. The result is ten concise chapters. Each one functions both as a standalone introduction and a launch pad for further, independent study. We’ll cover:

Computer architecture
Operating systems
Algorithms and data structures
Computer networking
Databases
Concurrent programming
Theory of computation
Programming languages
Compilers and interpreters
Distributed systems

As a programmer you will deal with these topics literally every single day. Read The Computer Science Book and you’ll be familiar with all of them. You’ll understand the underlying concepts, be conversant with the terminology and, most importantly, know the limitations of your knowledge and where to get deeper information when you need it.