[techtalk] This talk of N-ary trees and other things...

[Michelle Murrain]

I have a question for the group. 

I imagine many of you are self taught, as I am. Although I've been 
programming on and off (on for about 8 years, then off for about 8, then on 
for the last 3), and have learned, in that time, BASIC, C, Pascal and Perl, 
plus SQL and HTML, and smatterings of Javascript and Java, I'm realizing that 
I have some rather large gaps in my computer science knowledge. I didn't 
study computer science in college, since where I went to college didn't have 
it - although I spent a lot of time in college programming. 

I have the added twist in that although I absolutely love coding, I don't 
think it's going to end up being how I spend most of my time - I'm lucky if I 
get to spend 1/3 of my time coding. I'd be ectstatic if I could spend 1/2-2/3 
but I don't think that's realistic.

In any event, I'm looking to fill in some of those gaps - like algorithms. I 
have worked with them some in learning the languages I've learned. But I 
don't understand them in my bones the way I feel like perhaps I should, and I 
think that that means I'm not as good a coder as I could be. There are other 
things like that - theory behind operating systems, data structures, etc.

The advantage is that I am exclusively at this time a web app programmer, so 
most of what I've written is short, and pretty specific. But I'd really like 
to take my web apps to another level (I'm working on building a large web app 
to allow mere mortals to easily develop complex web database applications 
entirely by using a web interface.)

Do folks have suggestions on how to go about learning some of this stuff- 
I've thought about just getting a list of CS textbooks, and going through  
them myself, one by one (I'm a very good book learner). I don't have time to 
go back to school, either virtually or otherwise. 

If you are self taught, and have managed to learn some of that stuff, how did 
you do it?

Thanks.

Michelle
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Michelle Murrain, Ph.D.
President
Norwottuck Technology Resources
mpm at norwottuck.com
http://www.norwottuck.com