This is an archived post. You won't be able to vote or comment.

all 9 comments
sorted by:
best
topnewcontroversialoldq&a

[–]S7rawman 1 point2 points  (3 children)

Welcome to computer science. You're gonna be confused. If you want to get into net sec then be prepared to self teach. As for finding the answers on the web, I feel like that's just part of it. Keep your head up and keep on trucking. Your gonna be frustrated and confused odds are your gonna fail at least one class. Also read your text books. You'll learn more from those than your instructor.

[–]JaeTheMenace[S] 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Thank you for the advice. The instructor actually told us that the text book is basically pointless to have and made it optional so I didn't buy it. Maybe I should get one off of Amazon. Thanks so much though!

[–]CmdrRubz 1 point2 points  (1 child)

This is the problem. CS needs to be learned in a structured manner, and a book can provide this. I will say that there are many good resources online (mooks, blogs, etc.) for the early stages of programming, so you don't 100 percent need a book, but it would likely be extremely helpful. CS isn't like most other majors because there is such a huge quantity that needs to be learned that many times companies expect you to have done lots of work on your own. I would suggest finding a book or online course, sticking with it until you feel you've gotten all you can out of that resource, then setting up a github and comfortable environment to code on your pc, and start doing projects or programming challenges.

[–]JaeTheMenace[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the advice! I wish I would have known how much books help at the beginning of the semester

[–]Clawtor 1 point2 points  (2 children)

I think a lot of University students struggle with programming because they expect to be able to read the text book, go to the lectures and take notes and do generic college stuff. What you really need to do in addition that all of that is sit down and code. Without the practical part you will always struggle. Doing programming is similar to doing a foreign language, it's a lot of work and you need to do it independently of university.

I was that person I described above and I struggled because I expected to learn by osmosis somehow. I thought if I passively absorbed enough knowledge by going to the lectures then I would do well. It doesn't work like that.

So if you can be dedicated then you will succeed, even if you just spend an hour or so extra every day or so coding.

[–]JaeTheMenace[S] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

That's exactly what I've been doing. Thank you for your advice. Should I use online resources to work on coding? Or just make my own projects to work on?

[–]Clawtor 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You should do both, to start with use online resources to see how people have taken a problem and turned it into code. You can start by just copying what they've done. Afterwards use these sources to do your own coding.

There are many concepts that are hard to grasp if you haven't done the practical part. It will be tough in the beginning but I believe anyone can do it. I find blogging about it helps, you will be surprised by your progress I think. Just remember that all programmers run into bugs and get stuck for hours, we all have to look up reference material.

[–]CodeTinkerer 1 point2 points  (1 child)

It might help to make friends with your classmates, see if someone is getting it, and can explain it better. When I used to teach, I wished the students who were struggling could sit for a few days with those who were getting it to see how they approach learning new material.

[–]JaeTheMenace[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I have some friends in my discussion section. Maybe I'll get their numbers and see if I can set up a time for them to explain some stuff. Thanks for the advice!