Computer Science Distilled: Learn the Art of Solving Computational Problems

Excellent Resource and Jumping-off Point
I really enjoyed this book, and found the author’s writing lucid, engaging, concise, yet technical and informative. While it doesn’t provide every last detail about every topic introduced (important to note that it does not claim to be a comprehensive and exhaustive resource), it provides more than enough information to get a solid grasp on the concept and provides a jumping-off point for further research on whichever topic you’d like to learn more about.I personally found the chapter on computers (RAM, CPU, hardware, memory, OS, etc.) very valuable and engaging. One word of caution is that if you’re looking to purchase this book as a means to achieve that “AHA!” moment with Big O notation, time and space complexity, things of that nature, this probably won’t be it. Like I said before, the author provides an excellent starting point to introduce the contained topics, but these in particular will require quite a bit of additional footwork and practice to absorb.You’d be hard-pressed to find a better resource, whether you’re an absolute beginner or a professional already in the field looking to brush up for an interview or deepen your understanding of foundational knowledge. As a point of reference, I’m a self-taught computer engineer who has been employed in the field for 4 years without a formal computer science degree. I picked up this book hoping to identify areas where my knowledge was lacking, and Computer Science Distilled served that purpose beautifully.

Good overview, but can get a bit oversimplistic at times
This is a pretty good intro to CS in my opinion. It discusses the rudimentary aspects of subjects like discrete maths, runtime complexity theory, programming strategies, data structures and algorithms, databases, computer architecture and programming languages.One of my favourite themes in the book is the authors use of colourful images and cartoons to illustrate his point. In my opinion (and the opinion of some of my colleagues in the field), computer science textbooks can be a bit dull and boring. The author tries to liven things up with pleasant visuals and ICT humour that both techies and the general audience can love. Another thing that I like about the book is that the author covers many important notions in CS, like greedy algorithms, backtracking, sorting and searching, HashMaps, relational and non-relational databases, and different programming paradigms.My major criticism of this book is that it can oversimplify things at times. For example, in discussing searching algorithms (5.2), the author briefly touches on linear search and gives a rough sketch of binary search without getting too deep into how their runtime complexity is derived or discussing any implementations in specific languages (though the pseudocode that the author uses is similar to the Python language and this could be to make the book more “timeless”). Nonetheless, I understand that this is an introduction for beginners and the author probably doesn’t want to turn them off by going too deep.I’d give it 4.4/5 stars, great stuff! Can’t wait to read the sequel 😀

Ottimo prodotto, rispecchia le aspettative, funziona a dovere, come rapporto qualità prezzo direi che è uno tra i migliori che ho trovato su internet.

Bought this book out of curiosity. My son is in the process of choosing a career and, hey, the world has changed since I studied at University…back then we had two main choices: engineering or programming. Not anymore.While I worked at Google, a large part of new hires were Computer Scientists. I thought all they did was programming. Nothing further from the truth. I have now discovered what are some of the issues a Computer Scientist deals with.Wow, did I enjoy this book. Clear, engaging, fun, insightful,….I can’t praise it enough!!!! Neither does my son.For anyone who is looking for a solid, approachable book on this topic. This is it!!! Thanks Wladston

What I can say, it’s good! If you’re reading this, it’s likely you’ll want more information, ok, so here goes.The books key strength is introducing complex concepts in computer science in short form. It’ll first, mention the topic, explain the logic or math or thought process behind it and then provide a handful of example. It’s not a text book, but a primer. For the self taught programmer, or programmer that’s received technical training but no advanced University ot conceptual training in software development, this book is a godsend. It introduces you to idea like Permutations and the different kinds of sorting and all kind of different topic. The sort of stuff that you might stumble across while coding something but not really know what to call it in the language of your industry.A good example for myself, was I was doing challenges over on DailyProgrammer on reddit. I came across a simple challenge. Take the word ‘dog’ and create an output of every single possible combination of the word. Being a programmer from a technical school, I know how to code but we never really delved deep into the conceptual side of Computer Science. So, I start google “all possible combinations of a string” and low and behold I find some solution. However, after reading this book… I realize that what I was looking for was.. Permutations! Something I was never exposed to at the level I learned Computer Science. Which then opened the door and path to learning a whole lot more. The book is a great place to start if you’re a self taught coder, so you know the language and concepts many of your colleagues and computer science professionals use. It also gives you a brief run down of fundamentals for you to know where to start looking when / if you choose to delve deeper into a topic.In the end, coding is about using math to solve problems and this book is the primer to all those complex topics and it’s absolutely definitely worth a read. This book sits next to my copy of Clean Code, another must buy book. Clean Code teaches how to write your code, Computer Science Distilled teaches you how to use code to solve problems.A little background. I’m a recently graduated computer science student now working in the industry. I’ve only been working for 4 months, but this book has made a huge difference in my understanding of computer science’s more complex topics. When my lead developers talk, I have less difficulty following them because of this book. That alone is worth the price.