How many hours it took you to read the "How to think like a computer scientist" book? If not hours, days?

Question

carlsmith · Answer

It depends on what you know already. If it's your first book on programming, it'll could take anything from a week to a couple of months to work through. For an experienced programmer, it'd maybe take a couple of days.

You can read it in an afternoon, but you wont be able to learn to program in that time. Programming's like chess; it's not hard to learn what all the bits do, but it takes some real skill to know how to combine them well enough to consistently realise objectives.

vaboro · Answer

I like your phrase: "...to consistently realize objectives."
As far as I understand you're saying that creativity is the primary skill of a programmer.
I can't say I am an experienced programmer. I never programmed serious tasks, but I've been fond of computers for many years. I would say I'm an experienced user who really wants to go beyond ordinary use of computers :)

carlsmith · Answer

Yeah, I would say that creativity is definitely the key skill in programming, especially when you're using higher level languages. Obviously, if you want to write device drivers, you need more than a bit of creativity, but for writing little apps and doing web sites and stuff, you just need to be creative with what you know and willing to keep learning as you go along.

carlsmith · Answer

The book you're reading has another version, Python for Informatics, which is probably worth a look. It's less focussed on CS, instead looking at practical programming, data handling, scraping the web and stuff like that. It's a derivative of the book you're reading, but it's aimed at a slightly different crowd. It's open source so you may as well flick through both. http://www.py4inf.com/book.php

vaboro · Answer

Good, thank you!

carlsmith · Answer

No worries, see you around vaboro  :)

vaboro · Answer

Are you from the UK? :)

carlsmith · Answer

Yes, Peterborough, Cambs

vaboro · Answer

Cool :) You wrote "no worries" :) This is why I thought about the UK :)

carlsmith · Answer

Ah, I didn't realise that was particular to us.