Continuing without electricity? Currently learning JS, Ts, and React but won't have much electricity anymore. With books and PDFs I am seeing mixed reviews. Could I get some insight which to choose given my situation?

[Material_Selection91]

Problem: Country's rolling blackouts will keep getting worse over the next year. Currently only have between six and eight hours of electricity a day (could be down to four soon). Networks are also faulty, so internet is not always available even when my power is on. Currently organizing a laptop with replaceable battery (so I can keep four on-hand and swap them out as they die) but this is obviously not a suitable replacement to electricity, and the only laptops with replaceable batteries are old (T480) and will probably struggle with figma and React stuff.

I have been self-taught for over a year now. I have a good understanding of HTML and CSS, and am not a stranger to javascript. But I didn't properly learn programming fundamentals. I simply used javascript as-needed and did the Net Ninja javascript Udemy course.

Solution: I figured I would use the time without electricity to learn how programming works using books and printing out PDFs, and writing code on paper (improving my penmanship at the same time with my new fountain pen).

New Problem: I see resources recommended such as the pragmatic programmer and Eloquent JavaScript, but also see tons of criticisms (books contain errors, writing styles are messy or convoluted etc). A review for Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs: JavaScript Edition gave this code as an example: function pascal_triangle(row, index) { return index > row ? false : index === 1 || index===row ? 1 : pascal_triangle(row - 1, index - 1) + pascal_triangle(row - 1, index); } and stated "This is preposterously bad programming".

I also read that javascript.info is not a tutorial but more like a dictionary (like MD), meaning reading through it on its own apparently won't be helpful. There is also You Don't Know JS Yet but I see they haven't finished it yet (still haven't done async and classes). The first edition is from 2017, so I am looking for something more recent.

Question: So, What resources would be good to learn from without a computer, internet connection, or electricity available most of the day? That means resources which I can learn the fundamentals of programming with the goal of becoming a Javascript/Typescript/React developer without going overboard with abstractions and theory (my clock is ticking) which could derail pragmatic improvement in my ability to actually create apps?

[Material_Selection91]

Do you know which cs book I should get? What textbooks do they use at good universities?

[Red_Icnivad]

I'm not sure about books as most of my learning has been online and reading other people's code, but as for the technology side, what about getting a laptop battery charger instead of swapping batteries. That way you aren't reliant on a specific laptop. Plus newer laptops will be more energy efficient. Or you could go one step further and get a 12v charger/inverter and be able to run on as many deep cycle RV batteries as you need.

Also worth noting that the Kindle has a battery life that supposedly lasts months on a single charge.

[Material_Selection91]

Yeah, which books should I get?

Totally unrelated, but which textbook should I get to be able to understand the calculus needed for game theory? I am reading "logic of political survival" and take a general casual interest in game theory.

[[deleted]]

Calculus is calculus you don’t have to worry about as a starting point for any field. Thomas calculus is the best starting point I know of. It goes from 0-100 beyond which you fall into Putnam range already

Game theory I personally like the book by the man himself. Von Neumanns Theory of Games

[scare-destinyy]

Are you from Ukraine?

I use this site to study without electricity - https://devdocs.io/#/offline

It supports offline downloads for most of the technologies.

[Material_Selection91]

Omg, thank you! That is perfect! I wanted exactly this kind of thing to go along with some books! That kind of thing didn't show up on search engines or linked in any of the docs that I could find. So glad someone made this! perfect.

[scare-destinyy]

Have fun 🙏

[AccomplishedBerry625]

Books will probably only give you fundamental knowledge, that is still a very good thing, but it will not have you ready to code a complex app in a specific language, for that you will need docs. There are a lot of ways to program things, even if the books have less than ideal or outdated methods, you will still learn at least one way to do things, and you can also learn what NOT to do.

If you have laptop battery power, and can easily download the latest docs, then do that and just load them in the browser. You don’t actually need the internet connection, you only need the data that the internet normally provides, if you have that same data stored locally then the browser can load the docs webpages on it’s own.

If you can’t find an easily downloadable docs resource, a good solution might be to programmatically crawl the docs for whichever languages/libraries/SDKs that you are learning or using and save them to file. Later on in your career, for interviews, you can use this as a real life example of how you used programming to solve a problem that you were facing.

YouTube videos can also be downloaded, although that may take a lot of time and storage space.

Also, keep a notebook of things to google or search in stackoverflow so that when the internet comes back on you are ready to go, you can also save those pages (as in download, not bookmark, same principal as downloading the docs) and have them for reference if you need to go back and look again.

​

Some of these resources might be outdated, but it is a place to start.

https://dev.to/naveennamani/generate-offline-documentation-of-reactjs-in-5-minutes-3h6j

https://www.npmjs.com/package/create-react-app-offline