Oz @oznova_ Twitter profile

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Oz

@oznova_

6 months

I'm excited to announce that CS Primer is now generally available! Thank you to all of the wonderfully supportive beta users

Learn computer science by writing code

A self-paced platform for software engineers to learn the CS foundations they need, from computer architecture to distributed systems.

csprimer.com

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Oz

@oznova_

8 years

I wrote what I hope will be the definitive guide for teaching yourself computer science:

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@oznova_

6 years

I'm in awe of a former student I spoke to yesterday, who quit his product engineering job 6 months ago to self study quantum computing. Since then he presented novel work at a major conference and got a job at an exciting quantum computing company. Amazing stuff.

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Oz

@oznova_

2 years

Don't worry, it's impossible for AI to eliminate coding, because fortran already did so in the late 50s

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Oz

@oznova_

9 months

FYI there's a programmer's calculator built in to macOS... just ⌘3 in the Calculator app

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Oz

@oznova_

2 years

📢 today I'm releasing , a self-paced CS curriculum and platform designed for software engineers. If you're looking for something more interactive than working through textbooks, or can't join Bradfield due to cost/timezone, this may be for you!

Learn computer science by writing code

A self-paced platform for software engineers to learn the CS foundations they need, from computer architecture to distributed systems.

csprimer.com

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Oz

@oznova_

6 months

@jeremyphoward I hadn't heard of Bebras! Thanks for sharing. One of my kids loves these kinds of problems so it's nice to have an archive of past competitions to work through

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Oz

@oznova_

1 year

A thread of quirky little learning resources, mostly for CS/programming/math but we'll see where I go with it! Please chime in with suggestions.

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Oz

@oznova_

7 months

If you're a dad you should really watch Bluey. I had to be told this a number of times before I gave it an honest try, so I thought I'd at least pass on the message. This is me trying to articulate to my wife why the latest episode wrecked me:

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@oznova_

1 year

Agree, and more generally: CS is best taught well *after* programming... ideally after 2-5 years of daily coding, for most people. Imagine if people learnt tennis by going to school for 4 years before seriously hitting the ball. p.s. Madison is using :)

Learn computer science by writing code

A self-paced platform for software engineers to learn the CS foundations they need, from computer architecture to distributed systems.

csprimer.com

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@oznova_

2 months

A @csprimer student asked how to make fewer mistakes when implementing algorithms. This is what I came up with. What would you add?

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Oz

@oznova_

2 years

I loved programming as a kid. My dad told me not to bother, because all the jobs were going to Japan. I listened and even tried learning Japanese in high school. I found my way back eventually, but lost over a decade of momentum. Don’t listen to the GPT takes, kids!

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Oz

@oznova_

2 years

Is it egocentric of me to think that might be a major reason for this?

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@oznova_

2 years

Few resources will "teach you" anything, but you can still *learn from* them. Two approaches that stuck with me: "just try the exercises first" ( @balajis on textbooks) and "treat every proof as an invitation to prove" ( @michael_nielsen on math papers)

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Oz

@oznova_

7 months

@patio11 It's funny that native English speakers have basically the same complaint about languages that use cases instead of word order

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Oz

@oznova_

7 years

@sehurlburt In around 2hrs you can teach someone enough number theory to re-invent RSA. Don't need any more than middle school algebra going in, but by the end of it you've (re)created something as impressive as it is beautiful.

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Oz

@oznova_

1 year

Finally finished this project: a full brick pizza oven. It was my first time pouring concrete, bricklaying, rendering and tiling (thanks youtube!) and I didn't really have the time for it, so did it a few bricks at a time over a year.

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@oznova_

7 years

I keep ranting about this in person, so figured I'd blog-rant it to save my voice

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@oznova_

5 years

Some major Bradfield news: as of 6 months from now, all classes will be online via Zoom. Some rationale here for the curious: So if you've been wanting to take a course in person with me in San Francisco, you have 6 months!

Moving Online

Firstly an announcement: as of June 2020 (6 months from now) all Bradfield classes will be conducted online via Zoom, instead of our…

blog.bradfieldcs.com

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Oz

@oznova_

28 days

This prompted me to think through some other provocative "teach X before Y" ideas... I'm not fully sold on these but generally think they're better or at least worth trying: - Programming before math - Typing before writing - Integration before differentiation - Computer systems

Matt Bateman

@mbateman

28 days

I’ve always bought the “writing before reading” approach to literacy on the merits of general arguments and evidence, but seeing it play out with my child, it is even better than I thought it would be.

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Oz

@oznova_

3 years

@liminal_warmth Inter-human knowledge transfer is stupidly inefficient. Only 1 human should have to learn a thing “the hard way”… the rest should get it ~free. Atm it’s not even certain that one generation will retain skills of previous. Fixing this would be a lever for all other suggestions

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Oz

@oznova_

1 year

The scale of what I'm trying to do is starting to dawn on me... this week I produced 4 hours of video on DNS: a client implementation walkthrough and a bunch of supplementary explainers. This could be a course in itself, yet it's just 1 of 50 planned modules of CS Primer.

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@oznova_

2 years

Crazy how lucky my mother and grandma were to survive the earthquakes in Turkey. Eg a wall fell on grandma but she only broke some ribs. The doors and windows jammed but they miraculously escaped via this hole. Roads were blocked but they found a way out, etc.

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Oz

@oznova_

7 years

I teach computer science, mostly to working software engineers who didn't major in CS. Happy to help with learning plans and resource suggestions, career advice etc. DMs open.

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Oz

@oznova_

3 months

I recommend this book a lot and people wonder if I'm confusing it with something else, so I recorded this to clarify:

Madison

@Madisonkanna

3 months

this book has made me a better developer, one of my favorites. re-reading this today in the sunshine what’s everyone up to this weekend?

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@oznova_

1 year

I'm proud of all my students, but today I had the distinct pleasure of investing in a company started by one of my first, and I can't stop smiling 😁

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@oznova_

1 year

My new favorite beach is "the beach", a plane spotting location next to Sydney airport. Had no idea it existed until the kids started crying that they "needed" planes, and here we are

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@oznova_

5 years

I just deployed the first major update to in 4 years. Here are some highlights:

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@oznova_

3 years

I'm designing an absurdly ambitious course, trying to cover introductory topics in computer architecture, compilers, OSes, networking and databases all in 8 weeks (32 hours total) intended for experienced SWEs with little/no CS background. What do you think?

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@oznova_

5 years

Big news! 🚨 Today we launch the Computer Science Intensive: a 12 month live online program for early-to-mid career software engineers. If you're a self-taught SWE or bootcamp grad considering going back to school for CS, you should do this instead 😀

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@oznova_

6 years

Reclining desks are like standing desks except horizontal and actually pleasant.

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@oznova_

2 years

Good framing. You are a SWE, not a “rails dev” or whatever. Anything programmable is in scope. Your ultimate interfaces are humans on one end and physics on the other.

Chris Lee

@cglee

2 years

The job of a SWE is problem solving and not task performance. This is unlike most jobs that are under threat from automation (eg, delivery drivers). Transitioning to a SWE career implies signing up for a lifetime of solving progressively more difficult/interesting problems.

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Oz

@oznova_

6 years

Xavier's Engineering Leadership course is truly excellent, but I'd love to see more participants from backgrounds traditionally underrepresented in management. So, I'm putting $20,000 toward free tuition over the next 6 months for the right folk 🚀 Email me: oz @bradfieldcs .com

Xavier Shay

@xshay

6 years

The first one went really well, so I'm running another round of my eng manager course in July: Small group, in-person, intensive training and development for managers in SF! Capped at 8, and we had a wait list last time.

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@oznova_

6 years

UDP has to be my favorite network protocol: 🚀 Designed to have far *fewer* features than the competition 🚀 3 page RFC published in 1980 and never updated 🚀 Entire feature set is obvious from an 8 byte header 🚀 Enables some of the most novel layer 7 protocols, QUIC etc

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@oznova_

6 years

This is much less common than going back to school to make a career pivot, and I'm sure much scarier. But I've seen similarly spectacular moves a few times among students. Just takes courage and a level of interest bordering on obsession.

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@oznova_

2 years

Just got an email along the lines of "three of the highest impact engineers at this $1 B+ company just happen to be Bradfield grads"! Now to keep this up until it's true of every company :)

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Oz

@oznova_

1 year

Two decades on, I still get frequent nightmares about late assignments and going in to exams unprepared. Despite genuinely loving math and science in particular, I will apparently never escape the trauma of having been forced to do it the "school" way

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@oznova_

1 year

Not really sure how to describe what I'm looking for... but is there a curriculum that *motivates* science through engineering/technology projects? e.g. start with metallurgy, ceramics, agriculture etc and introduce science as the value starts to become clearer?

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@oznova_

5 years

In an effort to raise the overall standard of CS education outside of universities, I’m excited to announce that we’ll be waiving tuition for anyone who teaches programming or CS

Free tuition for teachers

Of the 100,000 or so new software engineers entering the industry this year in the US, only a small fraction will have graduated from CS…

blog.bradfieldcs.com

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@oznova_

1 year

How do you personally reconcile these? Hamming: "you must work on the most important problem in your field" Feynman: "the Nobel stuff started from piddling around with wobbling plates"

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@oznova_

1 year

Only 24 more to reach a major milestone!

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@oznova_

1 year

One idea I can't stop thinking about is an online dojo style training program for early/mid career SWEs: - Regular sessions 2-3 times/week - I pose problems, watch everyone solve live - I jump in to help 1-on-1 or discuss common issues with group Anybody doing this?

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@oznova_

2 years

Small 🧠: knowing about big O Big 🧠: realizing that calling sscanf in a loop will be O(n^2) Galaxy 🧠: injecting a .dll into GTA that simply caches strlen calls, to reduce GTA Online load time by 7 seconds (can't tell you how many times I've shared this

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@oznova_

6 months

This is a good mantra! We imagine that computers are as complex as e.g. biological organisms but they actually work by simple deterministic rules designed by mortals. Almost any behavior can be observed directly with simple, free tools. The main barrier is mindset.

N.O.R.A

@almostnora

6 months

daily affirmation "computer can be understood"

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Oz

@oznova_

7 years

How much would Euclid have paid to read a single paragraph of The Princeton Companion? Surely even Gauss would have made a Faustian pact to see a few chapters. But you could have all 1000+ pages of it for the price of a nice meal.

The Princeton Companion to Mathematics

www.amazon.com

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Oz

@oznova_

2 years

If you're a past, current or potential future student of mine and I don't yet follow you here, please let me know (e.g. like or reply to this) and I will fix!

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Oz

@oznova_

2 years

I've now heard from *a lot* of people that this particular article is what motivated them to move from routine web work to something more meaningful to them:

From Coding Bootcamp Graduate to Building Distributed Databases

Practical advice for early career software engineers.

medium.com

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Oz

@oznova_

7 months

A common question: is it better to learn bottom up (starting with foundational "pre-requisites") or top down (starting with motivating applications)? My best current answer: when riding a bike, it's best to pedal with both legs.

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@oznova_

7 years

@mike_acton 's amazing CppCon talk is literally required viewing for our comp arch course . you should watch it too.

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Oz

@oznova_

2 years

@erenbali Thank you for taking the time to tweet this. My mother is visiting Antakya right now and I heard about this through you. We have not been able to make contact yet, hopefully soon.

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Oz

@oznova_

2 years

A few students recently asked for suggestions for how to "stay consistent". I wrote up some thoughts here:

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Oz

@oznova_

11 months

I'm trying to get a discord going of dads who are thoughtful about their kids education. Let me know if this speaks to you!

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@oznova_

2 years

@benedictevans The way you're able to anticipate comments to generate humor like this is 👌

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@oznova_

6 months

View from my living room this morning

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@oznova_

2 years

A lesson I’ve learnt from jiu jitsu that I should try to apply more broadly: it is a gift to have your ego crushed.

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@oznova_

2 years

Starting to collect testimonials for my new thing and I have to say this kind of thing is good motivation to keep going!

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@oznova_

6 years

Everything I know about software engineering can be boiled down to "understand the problem before you try to solve it".

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@oznova_

2 years

My new favorite Discord channel is just a continuous stream of people having fun learning computer science

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@oznova_

6 months

In fact, this video is 20 minutes and explains why some decimals can't be precisely represented as floats, using 0.1 + 0.2 as an example. I walk through the bit packing scheme bit by bit to show you

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Oz

@oznova_

2 years

I'm very impressed by GPT-4, but I'm not using it to answer technical questions... its only advantage is ease: otherwise you get an answer that might be wrong, with no means to verify, and you're not actually getting any better at problem solving.

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@oznova_

4 months

I wrote a little about how we're homeschooling, to see who else is out there doing things similarly :)

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Oz

@oznova_

1 year

Same chair 4 years later

Oz

@oznova_

6 years

Reclining desks are like standing desks except horizontal and actually pleasant.

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@oznova_

4 years

Imagine a databases course where instead of having concepts explained to you on slides, you get to step through PostgreSQL in lldb and discuss stack traces etc. Wait, that's actually how @robot__dreams teaches it now :)

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Oz

@oznova_

2 years

I'm noticing that a lot of people who struggle to learn much from MOOCs and textbooks think they need more "structure" when often all they need are better feedback loops

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Oz

@oznova_

2 years

Sometimes I'm surprised that I have student making $500K/year ... then I realize they're in roles that could save/make their employers many multiples of that. These software businesses are just immense and there aren't enough SWEs who really know what they're doing.

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Oz

@oznova_

6 months

It takes maybe 20 minutes to understand floating point (and why this kind of thing is expected) but a lot of people would rather complain cluelessly

Theo - t3.gg

@theo

6 months

Good news: `Math.sum` is coming to JS as a way to do more precise floating point math Bad news:

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Oz

@oznova_

9 months

@melissa @anabology We didn't do it intentionally at all but ended up at a similar place. We like books and don't have a TV, so the girls just pick up books for entertainment and figure that's normal. Not quite "lofi girl" but sometimes we watch Ishitani Furniture on YouTube, as well as this group

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@oznova_

2 years

There's a student on a 4 day "self-imposed Carmack style retreat" doing as much as he can. So far he's done more than a dozen problems including a hashmap implementation in C, a simple DNS client and an HTTP proxy. I think he's 2 days in. Just fantastic!

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Oz

@oznova_

10 months

@paulg For those seeking recommendations, I've been enjoying this list by @lewis_dartnell

Further Reading - The Knowledge

The complete Further Reading section of the book, with each recommendation provided as a link for you to obtain the reference if you are interested.

the-knowledge.org

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@oznova_

3 years

This stuff works

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@oznova_

2 years

FAQ Q: I'm an experienced Python [JavaScript/Ruby etc] dev but have plateaued. How should I progress? A: Learn C, start reading the CPython source, alternatively explore your OS or DB internals... you have diminishing returns at your current abstraction layer so peel it back.

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@oznova_

3 years

I've always been focused on helping students *actually learn stuff* rather than get raises etc, but incidentally one student just got an offer for almost 5x his current salary as a mid-career engineer 🤯

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@oznova_

2 years

Before you get too excited about "AI disrupting education" don't forget that we're still teaching kids long division, barely using calculators in class (let alone numpy etc) and generally spending 12 years teaching math that's promptly forgotten by almost everyone.

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@oznova_

2 years

Yes. One of the biggest mysteries to me of web dev culture is why so many are voluntarily making their systems unnecessarily more distributed: microservices, third party services for everything, multiple data stores, Spark on small data, GraphQL... almost always bad decisions

Tristan Hume

@trishume

2 years

@geoffreylitt My enumeration of all the ways distributed systems kill productivity:

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@oznova_

4 years

Sad to be leaving SF at the end of June. It's the one place where people seem more interested in what you're making than in your background/education/nationality.

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@oznova_

2 years

People are asking me whether it's still worth learning systems-focused computer science if the next period is defined by ML... as if it's possible to escape this stuff! If anything web dev is a blip, where network latency *conceals the cost* of ignoring systems.

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@oznova_

1 year

One nice thing about winter here is that the kangaroos graze closer to the house in search of greener pastures

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@oznova_

5 years

You probably use /etc/hosts to block distracting websites. Did you know that prior to DNS, this file would contain all the hostname -> IP address bindings on the internet?

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@oznova_

16 days

One of my favorite Grant Sanderson videos yet: Notice: - He is not a SWE but needs a very high degree of programming competence to be successful - All his skills had to be contained in one person, not spread across a team Two trends, I believe.

How I animate 3Blue1Brown | A Manim demo with Ben Sparks

A behind-the-scenes look at how I animate videos.Code for all the videos: https://github.com/3b1b/videosManim: https://github.com/3b1b/manimCommunity edition...

www.youtube.com

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@oznova_

2 years

It's pretty cool that a guy I knew of as "one of the best JavaScript developers in Sydney" when I started my career is now a billionaire. He shows up on those "rich lists" in Australia alongside a bunch of people whose parents were mining magnates or whatever.

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@oznova_

1 year

Expert Python programming is C programming. Ultimately, Python is just a very large C library that you need to understand and work around/with not just on top of.

Greg Brockman

@gdb

1 year

Much of modern ML engineering is making Python not be your bottleneck.

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@oznova_

1 year

Outrageously bad list... not a single overlap with some of the clear best in this category: - Dream Machine - Masters of Doom - Soul of a New Machine - Showstopper - The Making of Prince of Persia - Programmers at Work - Dealers of Lightning - The Idea Factory - ... many more

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@oznova_

2 years

Interesting thing that many new users tell me: "I should really know this already because I [did a CS degree / have 10 years experience / did a bunch of MOOCs]" ... look it's not your fault! Most ways to learn this stuff are just not effective.

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@oznova_

11 months

Posting this with minimal context to see who the universe sends my way. Maybe you?

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@oznova_

2 years

Sometimes I get frustrated waiting a few hundred ms for tab completion over SSH... then I remember that my humble \t byte has to be wrapped in a TCP header in an IP header then various link layer headers over a dozen or more hops, for a 12,000km trip to the DC in CA. Go tab go!

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@oznova_

4 days

@math_rachel An example: our 5.5 yo currently does a lot of Scratch coding. At the end of last term of Scouts, the kids were asked what activities they'd like to do this term, and she suggested "make a computer game". Not a single person, including the adults, understood what she meant,

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@oznova_

6 months

Vlad is not saying this idly... he has solved almost all of the problems on the platform

Vlad Ten

@vladnineplusone

6 months

The best place on the internet to learn computer science fundamentals

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@oznova_

1 year

I still remember some of the first programs I wrote around 30 years ago (!!) and the joy of getting the computer to do things. It's nice to see that the feeling is universal (or at least, genetic?) ... I'll do what I can to keep it going indefinitely :)

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@oznova_

1 year

I really enjoyed this conversation with @Artoftheproblem , creator of some of my favorite computer science videos . Check out his work if you haven't seen it!

Brit Cruise and the computer magic show

Brit Cruise creates educational videos, learning experiments, and other amazing things that "connect young people with their futures as young as possible." H...

www.youtube.com

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@oznova_

1 year

One of my favorite things about writing is that I keep getting out of the blue emails about new translations. Now in Kyrgyz! This makes 16.

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Oz

@oznova_

2 years

There is ONE good illustration of the ASCII table, below, from 1967. Since then, people have produced 100s of inferior ones. What makes them do this!? None of the other image search results show why A | 0x20 is a, or why ^C sends sigint, or why shift+1 is !, or...

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@oznova_

3 years

I'm putting together a series of programming exercises designed to incidentally teach undergraduate level computer science (focused on systems). What would you include?

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@oznova_

5 years

People often ask me the best way to learn language X. IMO it's the same for all X: find a suitable problem set (e.g. exercism or Project Euler) and start solving them! Use and as references as needed.

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@oznova_

2 years

I've been reflecting today on how nice it's been to work on the same thing for a while... For one, it means I've had the pleasure of watching my earliest students flourish, like CJ (who would have been fresh out of a bootcamp in 2015 when I first started teaching him)

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@oznova_

4 years

has now been translated into Spanish and Vietnamese (in addition to the existing Chinese, Russian and Portuguese). Thanks James Archbold and Dat Hoang!

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@oznova_

3 years

My perfectly benign (and apparently useful, popular) website is being blocked in India. I'd love any pointers as to why this might be happening and how to get it fixed!

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@oznova_

1 year

It works

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@oznova_

1 year

A truism of education that just doesn't fit the structure of school: do more of whatever's working. If you're successfully learning basically anything, you should keep going, not be shuffled off to the next class/topic/semester/etc.

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@oznova_

2 years

Some pics of an in-progress Midjourney assisted redesign (left is before, right is after). Yes, a human designer might have done better, but would have taken weeks not hours, and charged a lot more than $60/month

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@oznova_

4 years

From a student just now: "Sorry I can't make class today! p.s. if Azure isn't working for you, I am working on it"

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