Ask HN: Which language agnostic programming/CS resources do you recommend?

[mayankkaizen]

I am 40 year old and I am new to programming. I know I am late to the party and therefore I am not really very much optimistic about making a career in programming. But I do want to understand programming related stuff (especially at fundamental level) just for the sake of quenching my intellectual thirst.

I'm put off by learning JavaScript and their frameworks kind of stuffs. But I do want to learn low level languages, how programming languages are designed and implemented, system level programming engineering, network engineering etc. There may be other areas you guys have found to be pretty interesting which I might not be aware of. You may have got the idea what I am looKing for.

I am looking for resources (it even may be a blog) which are neither too deep nor too shallow.

You can suggest anything you are excited about or you find interesting.

[moksly]

If you want low level CS stuff you could look up the Harvard and MIT entry courses on EDX.org. The MIT one is with python and more focused on the CS but the Harvard one starts with C, and usually has some really fun challenges evolving around low level programming like working with a bitmap, writing basic encryption and cracking it, and even making music.

I wouldn’t discourage JavaScript, I think Node.js is a really good environment to play around with programming. It may be much harder to find good learning resources for it though. There is a whole industry of charlatans selling useless programming courses, and a lot of them have unfortunately picked JS.

University CS is generally a good way to get to play with low level stuff though. I still have fond memories of writing my own client/server messenger app and working with various data structures, and you’ll find a lot of that on EDX.org, where a lot of it will be free and self-paced. Then once you have the basics of under your hood, you’ll also be more equipped to spot the resources to avoid.

I don’t think 40 is too late to learn, or to get into software development. There is ageism in our business, but it’s not rampant everywhere.