« first day (2065 days earlier)      last day (2376 days later) » 

ryan
ryan
12:39 AM
Seems like a lot of "questions" show up that are about "where to start in CS" (cs.stackexchange.com/q/83268/68251). I noticed there was a recent Meta post related to this topic (cs.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1426/68251). Is there any good reference question to point them to (even though it's technically off-topic)? Maybe like a pre-composed resource list in the help page or something. I'm not sure.
I think it feels non-conducive /non-inviting to people who are genuinely interested but don't know where to start. Especially when most of the time they basically just get "sorry, that's off-topic here"
 
Evil
Evil
@ryan have you searched meta or considered posting it there?
I feel the same, but there is a downside -> preparing answer to questions considered off-topic is not the greatest idea. On the other hand including it in the site description would be fantastic idea.
 
ryan
ryan
1:07 AM
@Evil I haven't looked through meta too much, I figured if there were any applicable meta post, it most likely would've been linked to cs.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1426/68251
@Evil Yeah, maybe not a prepared answer, but maybe a help-page for it would be useful
When similar questions get asked, send them to a help-page for general CS learning material, resources, etc.
Probably the mods would know more, but maybe citing particular CS online courses or resources could get StackExchange in legal trouble if proper permissions weren't granter. Maybe?
 
Evil
Evil
@ryan it is rather granted use if you quote or link some course, but links may rot. Quote with proper attribution (not overused to extend of the whole book) cannot put anyone into trobule, as far as fair use goes.
 
ryan
ryan
1:22 AM
@Evil I was thinking more along the lines of, if we put a Coursera link in the help-page, it could be perceived as StackExchange is specifically endorsing Coursera. Which could be bad?
But maybe this isn't a problem at all, just trying to think of the downsides to this idea
 
vzn
vzn
1:53 AM
@ryan nice idea but the place to start is with searches either on the site or with google. another angle, blogging. have collected many excellent refs over the years & have been waiting to write them up. there are many excellent questions that are beginner related on the site... another great/ fun way to browse the site is by highest votes or sort results by highest votes.
20
Q: Computer Science Book for Young Adults

Solomon081What is a good beginner computer science book for a young adult, say, a 15 year old? I want to get started in CS, but have no idea where to start. I have limited experience in programming.

education reference-request
34
Q: Concepts in theoretical CS that would be approachable ages 8-14

blundersGuessing it's unlikely a common question, but wondering if anyone has seen material that was clearly made to address this audience in a meaningful way.

soft-question teaching
 
Evil
Evil
2:18 AM
@vzn nice catch
 
 
9 hours later…
Thomas Klimpel
Thomas Klimpel
11:05 AM
0
A: Is there an O(n log n) algorithm for 4D line simplification?

EvilThe algorithm that works with 4D case is described in the article Near-Linear Time Approximation Algorithms for Curve Simplification by four authors: Pankaj K. Agarwal, Sariel Har-Peled, Nabil H. Mustafa, and Yusu Wang. Given a polygonal curve $P$ in $\mathcal R^d$ and a parameter $\epsilon...

 
Raphael
Raphael
@ryan Am not sure there is such a thing.
 
Thomas Klimpel
Thomas Klimpel
Evil undeleted his old (wrong) answer, and edited it so that it is now a correct answer, with a link to a really good paper, which will probably really help me "at work" with the problem which motivated this question. Please consider flipping earlier downvotes (for the wrong answer) into upvotes for this now correct answer.
 
Raphael
Raphael
CS, like any other academic field, can be entered in myriads of ways. If you "want" to "enter CS" but don't see such a way, why do you "want" to enter it? Not sure if there's a way to guide people who think they want/have to "enter CS". If there's a real need or curiosity, you won't need a guide.
@ryan Since Coursera is a commercial thing, we shouldn't link there "officially".
 
 
1 hour later…
Bounty!
Bounty!
12:17 PM
0
Q: Is there any standard for comparing runtimes experimentally?

WrzlprmftMy situation I am writing a paper presenting a software module I developed and I want to compare its runtime to other modules for the same task. I am aware of the drawbacks of runtime experiments, but please assume as given that there is no way around it in my case. (I can and do deduce some pro...

reference-request runtime-analysis
 
 
5 hours later…
Raphael
Raphael
5:23 PM
@ThomasKlimpel Cool! @Evil I'd upvote if you'd give a rough summary/sketch of the algorithm (it's currently dangerously close to a link-only answer).
Also, I'm not sure how robust CiteseerX links are. Maybe include a raw DOI link?
 
 
2 hours later…
ryan
ryan
6:58 PM
@Raphael Yeah I think general entry is not really a thing. Perhaps it might be better to ask them if there's a specific topic which got them interested, then should investigate that topic more
 
 
3 hours later…
vzn
vzn
9:36 PM
@ryan ofc general entry is a thing. SE isnt good at it. or designed for it.
 
ryan
ryan
10:23 PM
@vzn General entry in the sense that there's not one core topic that you could start learning. CS is built upon many many topics, each of which could be learned iteratively to then be built upon by other topics
@vzn So if someone asks, "where to start in CS", there's not one best answer. It might be better to probe them a bit, "What got you interested in CS? Why do you want to learn CS? etc" basically just trying to narrow it down to a topic small enough where you could give some textbook/wiki/paper recommendation
 

« first day (2065 days earlier)      last day (2376 days later) »