books

[bagpyper]

Hi, im new to the forums and programming. I am thinking of maybe majoring in computer science this fall in college, but I want to go into it with a little bit under my belt. Can anyone suggest some books that will give me knowledge I can use next year if i do decide to major in computers. I'd like to not get overloaded with info and not retain any of it. Thanks

[mischief]

there are probably classes at your college for getting your feet wet.

however, the best way for you to get a feel around programming is just trying out a language.

[aNewHobby4me]

Stanford offers online programming courses. Watch a few of the videos, and if you are interested you can download all the course material and software--at no cost.

The instructor for Programming Methodology says (tongue in cheek) that the only requirement for his class is to be able to determine if a computer is turned on or not. Yes, it is an intro course, but is university level education, it is free, and you can do as much or as little of it as you want, when you want.

[bagpyper]

yea i assumed there would be intro claasses but i wanna be able to go into the intro classes with a little more knowledge then the kid next to me, and that i can focus on other things too. Ive learned html and css and am in the process of learning java . Any suggestions to where else would be helpful

[IronWraith]

I am a comp sci major as well. If your school is anything like mine I would recommend to look into java before anything because that is what they start us off in class wise. Other than that you can kind off poke around with anything like c, c++, python, and such. If you have any questions about the major fill free to pm me.