
Ask HN: What fundamental computer concepts should a beginner programmer know? - sidzpah
Like memory etc?
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grawprog
I never took computer science or programming in school. So I ended up learning
a lot of programming without understanding a lot of the basics and I really
struggled with a few things that seem easy now. You can do a surprising amount
of things without really knowing but it also depends on what you want to do.

Learning about my computers filesystem and how files are stored was pretty
helpful. The way stdin,stdout,stderror and other files worked eluded me for a
while so I always had trouble parsing or writing to files.

I found learning about how memory worked and understanding the difference
between compile time and run time and stack and heap memory became important
when I worked more with compiled languages.

And this may be counter intuitive to what you read but I found I learned a lot
more about everything switching to a static typed compiled language instead of
a dynamic one. That was when I really began to learn. I realized how much i'd
just been doing things without really understanding what I was doing. Having
to learn different types and use them when appropriate as well as building
typea with structs really taught me a lot more about how my computer actually
processes the code I write.

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sturgeeee
Learning the computers architecture helps

