[colechristensen]

Looking for fundamentals to get you ready as a self taught programmer is going about it in the wrong direction. Pick something you want to do and go do it. When you run into roadblocks try to figure out how to solve them and when you get too stuck then ask the question "what are the required fundamentals I'm missing in order to solve this problem".

You'll find you will rarely need to ask that question, just keep solving problems and learning what you need to know for that problem. You'll build good experience and though that experience you'll learn a lot.

[boogieknite]

Im self taught and worked with CS majors as well as other self taught ppl. Maybe stating the obvious but its interesting that CS majors begin with fundamentals and work up to abstractions while self-taught people begin with beginner-friendly tools like nodejs then spend the next decade peeling back layers to learn all the inner workings of tools they used since day 1. Lots of prototypes kept me interested and built a habit of working on personal projects daily.

SICP was helpful in peeling back abstraction layers but I lost interest a quarter of the way through. I found The Rust Programming Book[0] really approachable coming from a nodejs background. Rust's compiler is so helpful I learned more about CS just working through the exercises and making mistakes. Rust really holds your hand but the book describes all of the "why" behind Rust's memory safety. Completely changed how I structure programs. After the Rust book I dove right into personal projects in Swift and fundamentals I learned in Rust translated very well.

[0] https://nostarch.com/rust-programming-language-2nd-edition

[colechristensen]

An entire CS curriculum from the beginning starting with fundamentals is particularly hard to follow by yourself and not particularly rewarding. Some people could do that but most would lose interest in the theory and never end up anywhere. It's the kind of thing that needs structure which not many people are going to create for themselves.

[LunarVB]

Interesting, thanks for the tip!