Questions about computer science

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JJQ
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Questions about computer science

Post by JJQ » 2008-01-07, 19:59

Hi all,

I'm new here but thats not the problem.
In the school i don't learn something about Informatics about. I think informatics is very interesting but also
very difficult.
I bought this book ( its German)
Have you good tips or can commend something?

best greetings

JJQ
Last edited by JJQ on 2008-01-09, 17:24, edited 1 time in total.
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Carsten
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Re: Questions about Informatics

Post by Carsten » 2008-01-08, 17:31

Hi Jonas,

welcome to the Ca3DE forums! :cheesy:
JJQ wrote:In the school i don't learn something about Informatics about. I think informatics is very interesting but also
very difficult.
Ok, first a side note: "Informatik" in English is "computer science", or "IT".
http://dict.leo.org is a great help here. ;)

If at your school you have no classes at all in computer science until you leave there, you might indeed be better off changing to a technical school if possible. The computer science classes at schools tend to be gentle introductions to the theory and practice of computer science and programming, and thus it's not something you should leave out if you're interested in this field.
I bought this book ( its German) [...]
Btw, please use this syntax for very long links:

Code: Select all

[url=http://www.somewhere.com/my/long/link/to/a/book] this book [/url]
I've updated your original post accordingly.

Well, in general, the book that you mentioned looks very good, especially if you feel comfortable reading it and it teaches you something.
In general, however, the more serious you get, the more likely you will have to buy several books over time, because not all can be learned from a single book, no matter how good it is. Buying more books also increases the likelihood to occasionally find a disappointing one among them, so it's always good to look at their table of contents or preview chapters at the internet first.
Have you good tips or can commend something?
You mean on beginners books? Not really, but maybe somebody else here has, I don't know (we're not exactly a programmers community here... ;) )
In any case, if you have a specific problem, feel free to ask. I'm happy to answer you questions here, but the more specific your questions get, the more you'll want to put them e.g. at special-purpose newsgroups.
Best regards,
Carsten
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Thrawn
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Re: Questions about Informatics

Post by Thrawn » 2008-01-08, 18:41

Hi JJQ,

as the book is German anyways, I'll write the rest of the message in German.

Ich bin in C++ mit einem Buch eingestiegen, was ich sehr gut, anschaulich und logisch fand. Klick mich. Allerdings ist das Erlernen der ersten Programmiersprache sehr anstrengend, und du musst viel Zeit, Geduld und Ausdauer mitbringen. Ich weiß noch, dass das Buch meinen Schädel sehr oft zum Dampfen gebracht hat.

Ich wünsche auf jeden Fall viel Erfolg :)

Grüße,
Thrawn
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JJQ
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Re: Questions about computer science

Post by JJQ » 2008-01-09, 17:44

Hi,

sorry Carsten I saw function for links but i must forgot it.
In the future i'm going to use the dictionary from leo. :cheesy:

I live near Idar-Oberstein there is a technical school but in computer science
you learn first to operate a picture program and after that
Pascal. In my opinion Pascal is very old and not asset-related.
Do you went to a technical school ?

@ Thrawn

I' think you're right c++ is very difficult but i'm not stupid :cheesy: and work very hard to learn
this computer language.

best greetings


JJQ
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Carsten
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Re: Questions about computer science

Post by Carsten » 2008-01-10, 22:24

JJQ wrote:I live near Idar-Oberstein there is a technical school but in computer science
you learn first to operate a picture program and after that
Pascal. In my opinion Pascal is very old and not asset-related.
Do you went to a technical school ?
Well, not really. I went to the Gymnasium Birkenfeld a few kilometers down the road. :cheesy:
It's a "neusprachlich, mathematisch, naturwissenschaftliches Gymnasium".

When I was there, of course I complained somewhat about the computer science classes (which started in the 11th year - Oberstufe - btw., no such classes were taught for the lower age-groups, but maybe (hopefully!) they changed that in the meanwhile).

In hindsight, however, the classes were not so bad at all, because they covered a bit in each important area in computer science:
  • technical (starting with transistors, then logic and gates (AND, OR, XOR, ...), then flip-flops, then larger circuits; later came van-Neumann computers with instruction counters, registers and so on that were programmed in a simplified dialect of assembly),
  • theory (e.g. finite state automatons, languages with context-free grammars, Turing machines and their power, etc.),
  • and of course practical programming, in Pascal.
First semesters in university are essentially the same, but both much broader and deeper.

In 2008, Pascal is partially outdated of course, and our teachers were not really computer scientists, but mathematicians or physicists. Nonetheless, although Pascal is (or was, at that time), not object-oriented etc., it is still a good language to learn the basics of computer programming. It does, for example, not matter at all in which language you understand a sorting algorithm, or recursion, and the transition to C or C++ is easy later.
I' think you're right c++ is very difficult but i'm not stupid :cheesy: and work very hard to learn this computer language.
Well, as said above, don't worry if you learn something else first, or something besides it. It isn't really the language in which you express the concepts that is important, but the concepts.
In university, it can happen that professors assign a usual weekly homework that is to be solved in a script language that you've never heard of before (the week is intended for solving the problem, not for learning the new language). Still, everybody expects you to pick up the basics of the language and solve the problem in the allotted time.

Oh, and a post-thought about the schools at Idar-Oberstein: I became a banker (Bankkaufmann) after finishing school and before I studied CS, and you should have seen the "EDV" classes they held at the business and economics schools of Idar-Oberstein: The teacher essentially did nothing but read the Excel instruction book to the pupils, or explained the ASCII table, which just assigns characters to numbers, as some kind of secret and cryptic device that mysteriously makes computers work... I still believe that people got spoiled there more than they learned.
Best regards,
Carsten
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