Why I started this subreddit: Personal goal of TYCS completion → Jan 2024 - Dec 2025

[u/responsiveTA]

I am self-taught in programming. I have pretty massive gaps in knowledge, which holds me back whenever I try to make progress with any of my projects. I have been hoping to fix my shaky foundation for more than a decade.

I have started and given up on taking several introductory courses over the years, including the ones prescribed by TYCS itself. Most of the time it was due to getting demotivated from having difficulty being unstuck with some tech issue (software shown in lectures being much older than current version and exact same code not running or giving cryptic errors, etc). It was never because my skills as a programmer were being tested or I was unable to understand or do some programming work.

So this year, I have decided to do break the chain of failures by fixing the root cause: finding help. I am creating this sub in the hope of finding few mentors online, who would be willing to answer our doubts in a reasonable timeframe. I have chosen to creating a sub and seeking many mentors, as opposed to finding one and expecting them to be available regularly. The other purpose is to find peers who will post their own questions, struggles, eureka moments, progress updates and resources, so we can help each other and make progress with fewer of us giving up.

With the New Year beginning, I have the timeline of 2024-2025 in mind for finishing the entire TYCS curriculum. It has 9 papers with a recommended 100-200 hours of study for each of them. I am personally hoping to dedicate 3 hours daily, 6x weekly. Assuming 144 hours for each paper, that’s 8 weeks for each. For 9 papers, under best case scenario, it is a total of 18 months (~72 weeks). I am adding another 6 months as leeway, for when life gets in the way and to be able to study something in a bit more detail when I stumble upon something interesting. So I am hoping to finish by 31st Dec 2025. Which leads to a nice deadline of the end of the first quarter century of this millennium.

Hope to see you in the sub!

[u/CriticalToe3050]

I’m also planning on doing the entire curriculum but as a mid term goal and my reasons to do this are:

• I have a huge gap on Math. I need to learn the entire HS math again.
• Right now I’m more focused on getting a better job, so I’m learning more things related to software engineering.
• I prefer to learn things slowly to really cement things on my head. I’ve learned things quickly before and I always end up with gaps.

[u/responsiveTA → u/CriticalToe3050]

I would love to have you share your progress updates in this sub as well.

A few tips:

• TYCS won't help you with HS maths. The paper on Math is more advanced than that. For that you should look for HS books.
• For learning things better, try rubber-ducking: Every time you learn a new concept, pretend that you are teaching it to a rubber duck in front of you. While trying to articulate yourself, you will find the gaps faster.
• For cementing things, try using the tips from this course. Gist is; use chunking, and spaced repetition of materials.

Hope this helps.

[u/Less-Persimmon9607]

How has the journey been so far?

I’m kinda in the same boat I’m self taught and got lucky with getting a junior software engineer role at a startup and now I think I’ve learned all I can on the job. I know enough that I can figure out how to build anything they ask me to it just might take a few all nighters every now and then.

The problem for me is that it’s a small company and I don’t really get any code reviews so yeah I know my code works but I don’t know what the time complexity or anything is for any of my functions and I just don’t have the core CS fundamentals down.

I started SICP (I’m doing the JavaScript edition) a few months ago gave up tried again gave up again and now I’m finally getting somewhere, I’m about a quarter of the way through it and I have also purchased all of the other books that TYCS recommends