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kukk007 t1_iwmyxnb wrote

After completing my renewable energy engeneering bachelor, I want to learn computer science as well but not through the university. Do you have any recommendations on which topics I should learn that would be useful, and do you have any links to good educational websites for this perpose? Learning Python is the one thing i have on my list, but I do not know if this is enough. I want to be able to make a website or an app by myself.

Apologies if it isn’t an acceptable question for this thread, but I would really appreciate any help!

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Weed_O_Whirler t1_iwn3ued wrote

I'm of the belief the best way to learn how to program is to choose a difficult, but "fun" (fun being fun for you, something you're interested in) project, and then just push through trying to figure out how to do it.

If you have literally no programming experience, you'll probably have to do some sort of classes (like an MIT Open Courseware class or something) just to learn the basics- but then just start on your difficult project, get stuck a bunch, ask questions (every programming language has a Reddit community), and push through.

I have found people get a lot more (and are much more willing to push through) working on something they actually care about, instead of pre-canned exercises.

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kukk007 t1_ix5l0nh wrote

Thank you for the reply and tips. I really appreciate it!

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bambataa199 t1_ix5bfhj wrote

Some time ago I wrote a blog post describing an introductory sequence of computer science topics: https://thecomputersciencebook.com/posts/how-to-learn-computer-science/

HOWEVER, I would argue that what you want to learn is first programming, and then if you're interested you can go further into computer science. Programming is getting computers to do things, computer science is at its core analysing computation itself. You might find it really interesting to study how a processor works and how a computer is structured, but this won't immediately help you to make websites or apps.

In computer science there is a hackneyed (any possibly apocryphal) quote by Edsger Dijkstra: "Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes."

Python is a very good language to start with. It is easy to build simple command line programs that get you used to the fundamentals of programming. To build fancy websites you will need to know JavaScript, but the idiosyncrasies of JavaScript and the web environment add to the learning curve so starting with Python makes sense imo.

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kukk007 t1_ix5lfno wrote

Thank you for the explanation and tips. I appreciate that you took the time to elaborate om this and will take it into account!

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