Computer Science Distilled: Learn the Art of Solving Computational Problems

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.

This book is really a pleasure to read, as other reviewers have mentioned it is a great book for beginners or others coming from other fields, and perhaps also a light refresher, to learn and be introduced to fundamental topics of Computer Science and computational thinking. The author presents topics incrementally that build up on top of each other. This book will not teach you the in-depth knowledge you may be seeking but instead presents topics in an easy to understand and fun way where you can dive in and learn more about on your own

This book is exactly what I was looking for. When learning programming, you're usually taught a lot of tricks and techniques without fully understanding how they originated or are related.

Upon reading this book I immediately recognised certain topics that I've come across before in disjoint ways and without context (things like endianness, probability theory and Big O notation for e.g.). The book does a great job of collecting, organising and explaining these concepts in an easily digestible format. It starts with core concepts, moves on to how these are expressed language constructs and in the hardware, and then concludes with some practical implementations of these concepts in things anyone learning programming would recognise.

I'd highly recommend for anyone who has even a remote interest in learning from first principles and who has a mind for problem-solving and using code creatively vs. simple rote application of programming techniques and frameworks.