What Computer Science concepts should I know? [closed]

Answer 1

I think a good understanding of how a compiler works is good to know. Aho has the classic book on concepts used in creating a compiler. The title is Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools. Its nickname is the Dragon Book. In order to really understand that book, you should have an understanding of formal languages. Hopcroft has a good book on that - Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages, and Computation.

Answer 2

Programmer Competency Matrix covered this in detail, but I'll highlight a couple:

• Data Structures
  • Advanced data structures like B-trees, binomial and fibonacci heaps, AVL/Red Black trees, Splay Trees, Skip Lists, tries etc.
• Algorithms
  • Tree, Graph, simple greedy and divide and conquer algorithms, is able to understand the relevance of the levels of this matrix.
• Systems programming
  • Understands the entire programming stack, hardware (CPU + Memory + Cache + Interrupts + microcode), binary code, assembly, static and dynamic linking, compilation, interpretation, JIT compilation, garbage collection, heap, stack, memory addressing…
• Source Code Version Control
  • Knowledge of distributed VCS systems. Has tried out Bzr/Mercurial/Darcs/Git
• Build Automation
  • Can setup a script to build the system and also documentation, installers, generate release notes and tag the code in source control
• Automated testing
  • Understands and is able to setup automated functional, load/performance and UI tests
• Problem Decomposition
  • Use of appropriate data structures and algorithms and comes up with generic/object-oriented code that encapsulate aspects of the problem that are subject to change.
• Systems Decomposition
  • Able to visualize and design complex systems with multiple product lines and integrations with external systems. Also should be able to design operations support systems like monitoring, reporting, fail overs etc.

Answer 3

I find graphs and some applied algorithms like depth first, breath first search, shortest paths etc very useful. Object orientation is also a really common concept.

Answer 4

Try to get an understanding of all levels of programming. From the lowest level (assembly) to the highest level.

Take recursion for example which is an easy feature :) Try to learn assembly and create a program that will use recursion in assembly.

Answer 5

Strive for low coupling, high cohesion.

(I stole this image from the website linked above)

Answer 6

Algorithms.

Learning to use a programming language in a descent way is something you can learn as you go, but It's virtually impossible to invent all the widely used Algorithms by yourself.. One really should at least be aware of what can and can't be done with some problems.

For example one simply can't write some programs with bubble-sort and expect it to be considered good, no matter how fine the code is.

To sum it up - take a look at Introduction to Algorithms

No need to master it, just know what's going on...