[markessien]

I'm a hardware guy, so I've got a different approach. I'd say, drop the algorithms book. Start with a book called "Structured Computer Organization" by Andrew Tanenbaum. After you read that book, you'll feel like you actually KNOW a lot more.

And after you read that book, you'll probably know a lot more than half the people here about how computers really work.

To compare the approaches:

- After you read Cormens book, you may be able to prove that quicksort is faster than bubblesort.

- After you read Tanenbaums book, you will know where the arguments are stored in memory when you call a function with multiple arguments.

Everybody has to decide which is more important for him to know, I know which was more interesting for me.

[donw]

I second this. Growing up in a family with a continuous lack of money, I was always having to work with computers that bordered on ancient -- the manual for my first computer was actually written in Sumerian on a clay tablet.

Having to actually learn to work with the system at a base level will be incredibly useful once you start to pick up more advanced concepts, and I imagine that the history of computing might be a topic in which you can find interest as well.

[jack0]

Actually, Cormen's book has no mention of bubblesort so unless our friend already knows what it is, he wouldn't have the faintest idea :)