If you’ve ever been dissatisfied with a piece of software you use and thought “I can do better than this,” learning CS might give you the tools to actually get that job done. It can also be a gateway to a fun, lucrative, and in demand career path. But Computer Science isn’t just about learning how to code. Along the way you could pick up a ton of cool tidbits. Here’s a preview:
•Assembly Language is Incredibly Fast and Powerful
– Sure, it’s tough to learn, but modern languages have nothing on the speed and power of Assembly. Dig into this “close-to-the-iron” language, and you’ll find entire Intel-compatible OSs written in 37k and super-fast word processors done in under 300k.
•Bill Gates Was a Crappy Game Programmer
– Some of the original Macintosh team dug this up while playing around with DOS. Early versions of DOSactually came with a poorly written little game called “Donkey,” where you drove down a little road and had to press the spacebar to avoid little blobs (donkeys) that would appear in the road every once in a while. One of the program’s authors: Bill Gates.
•Cryptography is Incredibly Cool
– Almost nobody becomes a programmer without geeking out on cryptography and code breaking just a little bit. In fact, many CS sequences include at least a few assignments that touch on cryptography. Eventually you’ll pick up something like Simon Singh’s “The Code Book” and you’ll get to spend a suspenseful day wondering how exactly Kasiski cracked the Vigenere cipher for really long keyphrases. Good times.
•Most Virus Writers Aren’t Very Talented
– Some controvercial schools actually teach classes in virus writing to give students a chance to learn real-world PC and code security skills. Dig into virus writing just a little bit, and you’ll quickly find that most viruses are generated by script kiddies using turn-key virus toolkits. What’s more, many of history’s biggest virus outbreaks either happened because of or were foiled due to some very simple coding mistakes on the part of the virus writer.
•People Write Entire Languages to Make Building One App Easier
– Ruby on Rails, for example, was derived from work that David Heinemeier Hansson did to build an app called Basecamp for 37 Signals.
•Assembly Language is Incredibly Fast and Powerful
– Sure, it’s tough to learn, but modern languages have nothing on the speed and power of Assembly. Dig into this “close-to-the-iron” language, and you’ll find entire Intel-compatible OSs written in 37k and super-fast word processors done in under 300k.
•Bill Gates Was a Crappy Game Programmer
– Some of the original Macintosh team dug this up while playing around with DOS. Early versions of DOSactually came with a poorly written little game called “Donkey,” where you drove down a little road and had to press the spacebar to avoid little blobs (donkeys) that would appear in the road every once in a while. One of the program’s authors: Bill Gates.
•Cryptography is Incredibly Cool
– Almost nobody becomes a programmer without geeking out on cryptography and code breaking just a little bit. In fact, many CS sequences include at least a few assignments that touch on cryptography. Eventually you’ll pick up something like Simon Singh’s “The Code Book” and you’ll get to spend a suspenseful day wondering how exactly Kasiski cracked the Vigenere cipher for really long keyphrases. Good times.
•Most Virus Writers Aren’t Very Talented
– Some controvercial schools actually teach classes in virus writing to give students a chance to learn real-world PC and code security skills. Dig into virus writing just a little bit, and you’ll quickly find that most viruses are generated by script kiddies using turn-key virus toolkits. What’s more, many of history’s biggest virus outbreaks either happened because of or were foiled due to some very simple coding mistakes on the part of the virus writer.
•People Write Entire Languages to Make Building One App Easier
– Ruby on Rails, for example, was derived from work that David Heinemeier Hansson did to build an app called Basecamp for 37 Signals.
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