philigran/computer science

So many things are wrong with this headline... First, a CS degree is no substitute reading all of those books, and the opposite is also true. They rather complement to each other. Second, most self-taught programmers may completely ignore these, concentrate on more accessible literature and develop decent skills which can be usable in the workplace. (There can be such a disconnect between a degree and a job description!) Again here, a CS degree and hands-on experience can certainly complement each other, much like philosophy and writing do when you compose an essay. Finally, don't even consider mastering all of this: your brain may well rebel through an act of self defense and try to corrupt you with mushy, artsy, spongy stuff in an attempt to reestablish the balance.

Apparently, there's no shortage of computer scientists who write, but the title of this article is a bit idiotic: you don't learn CS by reading, but by doing.

Some of my teachers at university used to get off on these maths, but they normally failed to transmit their passion for hard problems to their students. In fact, this is the sort of unpractical high end topic you teach promising software developers in order to encourage them to drop out of computer science. I personally might have developed a better opinion of myself had I remained ignorant of the knapsack problem.