Self-Study Questions Thread

TylerJay

There are a lot of autodidacts on LessWrong and many of us hold scholarship to be a virtue. Learning things on your own can be tricky for a number of reasons, but there is a lot of good material on LessWrong on how to do it efficiently. We know that it's usually best to build small skills in the right order, but sometimes it's difficult to figure out just what that order is, especially across disciplines. University programs have strict prerequisites that are supposed to ensure that you can handle a course before you take it, but taking a college course catalog's prerequisites to be absolute is an easy way to get demotivated before you learn anything you're actually interested in.

I've seen a lot of people run into trouble with self-study when they really want to study topic x, but know that they have to study topic y first as a prerequisite. (For example, I once saw someone on LW who wanted to start learning programming, but thought he couldn't get started without learning a bunch of math first.) For progress to be by accumulation and not by random walk, it is sometimes necessary to do this, but it can be hard to tell.

I wanted to create a thread where would-be autodidacts with limited knowledge of their target domain can ask these kinds of questions so that they can better plan their courses of study. Whether it's questions about specific texts, recommended prerequisites, MOOCs, course overlap, whatever.

Any general discussion about self-study is welcome too.

As I mentioned here, I am engaged in self-study to become a software engineer. I now have a (tentative) 3 year (roughly 2^10 hour) plan for learning the relavent skills. You can take a look at what I'm doing and track my progress here.

Currently, it includes learning touch-typing, math, logic, computer science, Java, C, Ruby, Haskell, SQL, HTML/CSS, Unix, and getting a degree in computer science with a concentration in software engineering.

The idea is to read and do all the exercises in the texts listed under each goal and move onto small personal and open source projects for the remainder of the time.

I'm open to and would appreciate constructive criticism of the plan, book suggestions, relevant anti-akrasia techniques, etc... Also, before I get any comments about the "slow" pace, keep in mind I own my own business, have an almost 1 year old son, and am going to school full-time.

Hey. Your plan looks interesting and I'm wishing you all the best with your project on self-studying. If you want to learn about logic take a look at the online courses on coursera from the University of Melbourne : https://www.coursera.org/course/logic1 https://www.coursera.org/course/logic2

4[anonymous]12y

I think your plan is good, and I like the idea of having it visible (and on github as well - a requirement for software engineers these days). You have 32 hours for HTML and CSS but you could also include some time prior to that on core design principles / Human Computer interfaces. It is one of those skills that while not directly related to building the software (interface is often done by a design team), will set you apart as a developer.

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