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How to Learn Computer Science? (from Zero to Hero)

If you want to learn Computer Science and you’re just starting out, you probably have a lot
of questions. What programming languages should I learn? Is it enough to learn one or
two programming languages to secure a good job at a big tech company? What other
skills do I need, if any?

With so much information out there, aspiring software engineers can find it difficult to
ferret out the valuable information from the rubbish.

I know how it is because I’ve been there too.

Needless to say, it took me a long time to find the answers that I needed.  But it doesn’t
have to be like that for you.

I searched online, trying to find quality information, but the ONLY good resource I found
was an article written by Ozan Onay and Myles Byrne from the Bradfield School of
Computer Science.

So I decided to write an article that reflects my personal opinions and experiences.

This article reflects my personal opinions and information that I’ve discovered through my
real-world experiences. It gives you a broad overview of what your CS career will look
like, from start to finish. It tells you what skills you absolutely must acquire. It even lets you
know what to expect at each and every step of the way.

The overall thesis of this article is that software engineers pass through three different
phases.

I am going to explain to you exactly what these three phases are. Afterwards, I’ll tell you
exactly what skills you need to move from one phase to the next, so you can get what
you want from your career.

The Three Phases of a Software Engineer

Highly successful software engineers progress through three consecutive phases.

I’d like to point out that some software engineers never progress beyond the first phase,
and others don’t move beyond the second. Only highly successful software engineers
reach the third phase.

These three phases are:

1- The Coder
2- The Programmer

3- The Computer Scientist

It is important to mention that this classification is my own development, based on my

personal experiences and observations.

Let me explain each one of these phases.

First Phase: The Coder

Every software engineer begins his career as a coder.

This can happen at a very young age.

You don’t even need a college degree to be a coder.

So, what is a coder?

A coder is someone who knows how to speak the language of a machine.

When given a particular problem, a coder knows how to break down that problem into
instructions that the machine can understand in order to come up with a solution.

Here’s the thing: if you find yourself really struggling at this phase, you may want to
consider a different career path. The coding phase is literally the easiest phase of your CS
career.

If you succeed at coding, congratulations! You might have a successful career as a

software engineer.

Unfortunately, many software engineers remain in this phase for their whole career.

If you’re just a coder, your pay won’t be great because your skills are easily replaceable.

And if you remain just a coder, your promotions will be severely limited.

At this stage, you shouldn’t even expect to get an entry-level job at any of the big tech
companies.

You need to evolve at least to the next phase for this to happen.

You need to be a programmer.

Second Phase: The Programmer

Once you have learned the basics of at least two programming languages (preferably one
statically-typed and one dynamically-typed), you are a solid coder.

The question now is how do you promote yourself to the programmer status?

A programmer is essentially a sophisticated coder.

Writing code that does the job is what coders do but writing efficient code that does the
job is what programmers do.

Here is a list of some skills that you should have as a programmer:

1- you should know the fundamentals of how any code eventually turns into something
that a hardware chip can understand and execute.

2- you should understand that any system has finite compute, storage, and network
resources and your software should utilize these resources efficiently.

3- you should know how to use data structures and algorithms to write efficient code.

4- you should understand what makes code efficient and what doesn’t.

5- you should understand that quality is important and that testing your code is crucial.
Now I have good news and bad news for you.

The Bad News: This is not the end. There is still a long way to go on your career path.

The Good News: There are a lot of coders out there, but there aren’t a lot of solid
programmers. If you really master this phase, you can easily secure a job at one of the big
tech companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, and others. In fact, most of the interviews
conducted at these companies test how good of a programmer, not how good of a
coder, you are.

I wrote an in-depth article that discusses everything you need to know about the coding
interview process. Be sure to check it out if you’re at this phase in your career.

The vast majority of software engineers retire at this phase.

Third Phase: The Computer Scientist

Learning does not stop after mastering the programming phase.

As a matter of fact, it actually starts here!

When you are at the computer scientist phase, you’re essentially an architect who thinks
about the big picture more than the nitty gritty details.

You have a solid understanding of designing large distributed systems and you know how
to build scalable systems that can handle large loads and tolerate failures.

A computer scientist also never stops learning, and always tries to stay up to date with the
latest in technology.

At this level, you’ll most likely be in charge of big projects and you’ll be managing a team
(usually of coders and solid programmers) to get the job done.

You might also need to cooperate with other teams.

All of these require stellar social and leadership skills.

In the rest of this article, I will go through the technical skills that you need in order to be a
coder, then a programmer, and finally a computer scientist.

Let’s get started.

1- Programming

The first and only step to becoming a coder is to learn programming.

This is the easiest step in your CS career, and it gives you a quick feedback about whether
you should pursue a CS career or not.
When it comes to choosing programming languages, I don’t want you to fret over what
programming language to learn.

At this stage what matters is not the particular programming language, but the concepts
that you will be learning. These concepts will hold true in almost any other programming
language.

When you become a more seasoned programmer, you will reach a point where learning a
new programming language doesn’t take more than a week, so don’t waste your time
trying to find the “perfect” programming language to start with because: a) it doesn’t exist,
and b) it doesn’t matter.

With that said, I personally recommend you start with the following two languages. I will
explain my reasons behind these choices, but feel free to start with whatever you’re most
comfortable with.

Python

I highly suggest you start with Python

Why?

Because Python is a language that is very easy to learn. Like,

really, really easy!

It is a very high-level language which allows you to write

real programs in just a few lines of code.

So, in a short amount of time, you will be able to develop significant projects.

If you’re interested in learning Python, check out my step-by-step guide that I have laid out
for you to take you from an absolute beginner to a professional Pythonista.
These features of Python are extremely important, especially when you’re starting out.

To learn python, I highly recommend Python Crash Course. (make sure you get the newer
second edition)

I find it to be very useful for beginners.

I also like that the book is project-based, so you’ll have fun building things while you’re
learning to code.

Tips for Students

1. You can get your books faster with no shipping fees if you sign up for an
Amazon Prime Student account (free for 6 months)

2. Depending on what and how many books you want to get, it might be cheaper
to join the Kindle Unlimited program (30 days free trial)

Java

Why another language though?

 The reason I recommend learning another language, especially Java, is because it will
teach you some programming concepts that don’t even exist in Python.

For example, Python is a dynamically-typed language while Java is a statically-typed

language. If you don’t know what that means, you will understand it after learning these
two languages.
A combination of Python and Java is a very good way to
start because together they provide you with a very solid
idea of the programming concepts that you will need in
almost any other programming language.

To add to the benefits mentioned above, both Python and

Java are heavily used in industry. So not only will you be
spending your time learning the foundations that will pave
the way for you to progress further, but you will also be
learning some practical languages that are very employable
and in high demand.

I learned Java from the Java core series many years ago.

Two separate books are offered. One is for Java fundamentals, and the other is for
advanced Java features.

I’d recommend not to overwhelm yourself with the advanced features for now. Focus on
the fundamentals in this phase.

Congratulations! Now you are a coder!

2- The Software Stack

OK. So you can write code that can do some really cool stuff, but seriously do you even
understand what’s going on?

Say you write a very simple program that just adds two integers and prints the result to
the screen.

In Python, that would look like this:

x = 5
y = 10
print(x + y)

I take it you understand your code. You understand that a computer running your code
should output 15.

But do you really understand what’s happening under the hood?

What does variable assignment (x = 5) mean at the hardware level? What is  x, really? How
is the number 5 represented in hardware? How does addition actually happen? And how
did the result end up on my screen?!!

At the end of the day, a computer is just a collection of hardware chips and wires.

How can a computer really understand your code? and execute it flawlessly?

The fact of the matter is, your code is just the tip of the iceberg. There are a lot of other
layers under your code. Together, they make the whole thing work the way you expect it
to work.

A programmer unravels this magic.

At this level, you need a solid understanding of all the layers of the stack starting from
your code, all the way down to the hardware layer.
The Elements of Computing Systems by Noam
Nisan and Shimon Schocken is unequivocally my top
suggestion for a book that will teach you the essential
information you need to understand each layer of the
stack.

The book covers hardware, compilers, linkers, and

operating systems at a very basic level which makes it
very beginner friendly.

It walks you through the steps of creating your first programming language, creating a
compiler and a linker for it, and then creating an operating system.

3- Algorithms and Data Structures

Now you’re in a very good shape to go back and start

programming again, but this time with a completely
different mindset.

Because now, you REALLY know what’s happening

under the hood.

You understand how hardware is eventually going to

run your code.

You know that you have limited hardware resources and you understand the value of
utilizing the available resources efficiently.

Studying algorithms and data structures will teach you how to write code in a way that
makes your code more efficient, however you define efficiency. it could be speed,
resource utilization, or both.
The skills that you are going to learn at this phase are some of the major differentiators
that separate average coders from solid programmers.

In fact, most big tech companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon focus a lot on data
structures questions during their interview process.

When it comes to algorithms and data structures, there isn’t really much debate about the
best book that covers the subject.

It is unequivocally Introduction to Algorithms (AKA CLRS).

Be aware that the topic of data structures and algorithms is language neutral, so it doesn’t
matter which programming language you’re using.

However, some people prefer to read books that are specific to their preferred language.

Even though that’s not my style, but you can find a lot of good language-specific data
structures books like this one for Java and this one for Python.

4- Networks

It is very rare that your code will run on an isolated single

machine.

Most useful code communicates with other computers

either in a local network or the internet.

Programmers need to have a very solid foundation of how

computer networking works.

I came across, in my opinion, the best networking book

when I was a senior undergrad. It helped me overcome the dry text book that my
professor at the time recommended.
Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach by Kurose and Ross is a very well-written,
super easy to understand book that covers all the networking basics that you need to
know.

I still go back to this book every now and then if I need a refresher.

5- Operating Systems

Operating systems play a major role in the software stack.

If you are following this list in order, by now you should have a
very broad idea of the role of an operating system in the stack.

But now is the time to have a deeper understanding of

operating systems.

Operating Systems Concepts by Abraham Silberschatz is one of

the best books on the subject.

You need some basic knowledge of C though, because the majority of operating systems
are written in C.

My recommendation, unless you want to be a kernel developer,  is not to allow yourself

to get stuck at this point.

This is a very dense topic. Understanding all the details of all the aspects of operating
systems is very time consuming.

Grasping the main fundamental operating systems concepts is good enough to keep you
going but don’t get bogged down in details.

Another resource I highly recommend is the OSDev Wiki, especially if you want to learn
how to create your own kernel. This is pretty advanced, but it’s something that the vast
majority of software engineers can’t do.

Look at that! You’ve achieved the status of programmer!

6- Distributed Systems

Welcome to the start of your computer scientist status.

In this level, you will be learning new skills while you

improve the skills you learned as a programmer.

Distributed systems is about building and architecting

software systems that are scalable and that can tolerate
failures at the same time. This requires you to think of the
bigger picture, rather than focusing on how to build the
individual components–programmers and coders can do
that.

For example, think about building a search engine service, like Google, for some text files
that exist only in your laptop.

This service will listen to search queries that it receives over the network, search your files
for the query, and respond with the results.

This is not a hard thing to do. Any programmer with a decent knowledge of algorithms

and data structures can build an efficient search engine for a small number of files.
Now imagine that more and more people become interested in your service and they
start using it.

Now you’re getting millions and millions of requests a second.

Not only that, but the size and number of files you are searching through begins to grow
dramatically.

What happens if your laptop (that hosts the search service) fails?

Will you just ignore the millions of requests you’re getting?

Distributed systems is about creating an army of computers that work together to form a
specific task (in our example, the search service).

It allows you to create scalable systems that can handle more requests or more data. At
the same time, it provides redundancy that would be useful in case any one (or more)
machine fails.

Now, let’s talk about resources.

By far, this blog post is the best resource I have found on the subject (disclaimer: you will
need to read some academic papers).

If you are a text book kind of person, then this O’Reilly book by Martin Kleppmann is
excellent. I have skimmed through it, and it covers most of the important topics.

With that said, Distributed Systems is a field where experience matters a lot.

So learn the theory, but also get your hands dirty by working on distributed systems
projects.

7- Machine Learning
Machine learning is an interdisciplinary field that
spans computer science, mathematics, and
statistics.

In this day and age, it is being used every

where! Netflix uses it for movie recommendations,
Amazon uses it for their recommendation engine and for Amazon Echo, Vesty Waves uses
it to automatically classify articles, and the list goes on.

To be able to build these types of software, you need to be more than just a solid
programmer because as I mentioned this field requires a very strong mathematical and
statistical foundation.

And no, learning everything about Python’s Scikit-Learn library (a very popular Python
library for machine learning) won’t make you a data scientist or a machine learning expert.
You still need to understand the mathematical and statistical underpinnings.

There are two ways to study machine learning: the top-down approach method, where
you start first by writing machine learning code right away (for example ,by using Python’s
Scikit-Learn library) and understand the math later, or the bottom-up approach, where you
start with the math first and then move up to coding.

I personally prefer the second method, just because that’s what works best for me. Even
though It’s harder to start and takes longer before you start writing code, once you grasp
the concepts, learning how to use a machine learning library is going to be a piece of
cake.

On the other hand, the top-down approach has the advantage of allowing you to begin
writing machine-learning code fast.

This motivates a lot of people.

The downside of the top-down approach is that it will be much harder for you to
understand why some techniques work, while others don’t, because you won’t have the
necessary mathematical background at first.

Andrew Ng’s course on Coursera is a very good place to start.

If you have prior knowledge of mathematics, probability, and statistics, then An

Introduction to Statistical Learning is a very good book for building the statistical and
mathematical foundations for machine learning.

However, don’t use this book if you aren’t already strong in linear algebra, probabilities,
and basic statistics because you will not be able to understand it.

If you want to solve real world problems and make money doing this, then create a team,
go to Kaggle, solve a problem, and make some money.

And even if you don’t win, you will learn ‫ق‬

You did it! You can now call yourself a computer scientist!

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By Karim

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Stanley  

Well… 3 years of CS and this is the best thing I have seen anywhere. I must confess though I’m having trouble

getting past the coder phase but I believe it’ll pass.

Very well written article. I need to share it with my fellows.

 Reply

 2 years ago 

Karim  

Thanks Stanley! Keep at it and good luck ‫ ق‬You will soon go past this coding phase.
 Reply

 2 years ago

Nuhu Jerry  

I find this very inspiring and important as its has helped me understand the fundamentals of being a computer

scientist!

thank you very much

 Reply

 2 years ago 

Karim  

Nuhu! Thank you very much. Glad the article helped you.

Reply

 2 years ago

Hussein M Yussuf  

So helpful indeed, i really appreciate for a well done job, keep it up!!!

 Reply

 2 years ago 

Karim  

Thanks Hussein and good luck in your career!

Reply

 2 years ago

George  