Computer Science
Algorithms, Theory, and Machines

See, the thing is, when you're actually working, you probably only think about CS concepts like 1% of the time. A lot of people slowly forget after graduating college, but as long as you remember the idea behind then, you can look it up.

If you want to see what a top company like Google recommends studying: https://careers.google.com/how-we-hire/interview/#interviews-for-software-engineering-and-technical-roles If you can recognize all the terms in this list, that's a good place to be. If you can actually describe everything, even better.

I recommend taking some free online courses like on Coursera. Example:
https://www.coursera.org/learn/cs-algorithms-theory-machines
https://www.coursera.org/specializations/data-structures-algorithms
https://www.coursera.org/specializations/algorithms

The courses might teach you a little bit about hardware, but you can skip those if you want.

edit: If these courses aren't free, look around on other sites. There are even plenty of videos on youtube if you know what to search for.

https://www.coursera.org/learn/cs-programming-java

https://www.coursera.org/learn/cs-algorithms-theory-machines

https://www.coursera.org/learn/algorithms-part1

https://www.coursera.org/learn/algorithms-part2

Princeton university. All free, no certificate.

Java is an excellent choice of language to learn if making an Android app is your eventual goal. While Kotlin is also available, your desire of wanting to learn a language in the context of physics simulation makes you a perfect audience for a highly recommended book called Computer Science: An Interdisciplinary Approach by Robert Sedgewick. This book is excellent because of the interesting problems and wide breadth of science and math topics that it touches upon while teaching the Java language.

The upside to going through this book is you will have an excellent foundation of Java and computer science, fully prepared to learn Android programming. The downside is that this will take longer than a tutorial approach, and the book costs money. Here is a sample chapter 2 in PDF format.

Please note that Robert Sedgewick has another book called Introduction to Programming in Java. The difference between this book and the Computer Science book is that the Computer Science book has the entire contents of the Intro Java book, but also has three additional chapters on computing theory, computing machines, and processor design. Since the two books cost about the same price, you might as well get the larger Computer Science book with additional content.

If you prefer video lectures or an online course, they are available for this textbook:

Video lectures

Coursera's Computer Science: Programming with a Purpose

Coursera's Computer Science: Algorithms, Theory, and Machines - This course covers the second half of the Computer Science book.

It depends on your personality. When I went on this learning journey I didn't like the odin project, because it had no videos, no interactivity and made me feel like I'm alone in all this, but most importantly I needed something, a stick, to keep me going, and in my case those were certificates.

They've been completely worthless in terms of getting a job, I did that with my knowledge and projects, but they served as capstones which gave me a sense of accomplishment without which I would have definitely not been where I am now. They kept me going, I still have a collection of them in a folder, and even printed some of the ones I'm more proud of, but yeah, my employer didn't ask me about them. Shame, haha.

Between those 2 choices, I prefer neither. I recommend at least 2 computer science classes/courses before getting into web development.

Examples:

https://www.coursera.org/learn/computational-thinking-problem-solving

https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-computer-science-harvardx-cs50x

https://www.coursera.org/specializations/python

https://www.coursera.org/learn/cs-programming-java

https://www.coursera.org/learn/cs-algorithms-theory-machines

https://www.coursera.org/learn/algorithms-part1

https://www.coursera.org/learn/algorithms-part2

The reason why I recommend learning to code before web development, is because once you start your web dev journey and eventually get to JavaScript, you will hit a rock solid wall that will be highly discouraging. Been there.

Once you've finished something like CS50, your web development journey will be a breeze.

My Study Plan to evaluate

Hi, I'm looking for opinions about my "path" to learn Java on my own, before I will go to college, next year.

Now i'm going through The University of Helsinki's "Object-Oriented programming with Java" series for beginners.

• Part 1
• Part 2

Then I will consider updating my info with Tim Buchalka's course about Java to get info about features on newest Java(is it a good idea?).After That i want to consider taking part in MIT courses:

• Software Construction in Java
• Advanced Software Construction in Java

After these courses in Java I consider going into Princeton courses about algorithms and UC Berkley about Data structures:

• Computer Science: Algorithms, Theory, and Machines (Princeton)
• Algorithms, Part I (Princeton)
• Algorithms, Part II (Princeton)
• Computer Science 61B (Data structures) (Berkley)

and now I consider going through Kotlin/Android developing i have no courses so far for it but I think i have enough for few months so far, I want in a future add Swift and/or Python and/or JavaScript to my repertoire. In meantime I have few books so fart that I want to read:

• Clean code
• Think like programmer
• Cracking the coding Interview

Is there anything that I should add or change here?

PS. I'm thinking about searching UC Berkley courses CS61A and CS61C online, if there are online, should I get through them, is it worth it?

Have you looked at the following online courses in Coursera?

• https://www.coursera.org/learn/cs-programming-java
• https://www.coursera.org/learn/cs-algorithms-theory-machines
• https://www.coursera.org/learn/algorithms-part1
• https://www.coursera.org/learn/algorithms-part2

If you decide to try out that route, I'd also pick up the course/author's texts, Sedgewick & Wayne, Computer Science: An Interdisciplinary Approach and Sedgewick & Wayne, Algorithms, 4th edition, as their texts covers more than what is in their Coursera courses and they have many more problems/programs to learn from and write as practice/exercises. I find their texts to be quite readable/accessible, and a good gateway to go into more advanced algorithms material.