Who Made This?
Hi, I'm Nate. I've been a software engineer for about 14 years. For my day job, I'm a DevOps/Infra/Platform Engineer. Last year, I decided to build Bitwit.
For the past few years (and very intensely for the last year), I've felt a strong desire to improve my understanding of computer science and mathematics. Mathematics, because of MathAcademy, is going well. I haven't had much luck with computer science, though.
I've subscribed to several sites, at great cost. The usual suspects - LeetCode, etc. And don't get me wrong, I appreciate the value of LeetCode. I enjoy DSA exercises, just as I enjoy (re-)learning calculus and linear algebra for its own sake. Not great interview material, not representative of the day-to-day work of software engineering, but I enjoy it. Perhaps because it's so unlike my day-to-day work...
There's nothing, though, that I think helps to build an intuitive sense for the ideas of mathematics and computer science. That does not come easily to me, however many exercises I might do, or however many algorithms I might write. I've bought a great many books on Lisp, lambda calculus, logic, information theory... and it seems like everything comes in my eyes, circles around my brain for a few moments, and then oozes out one orifice or another.
Last year, I decided to do a deep dive on Lisp, and so I bought and started reading _The Little Schemer_. The Socratic method used by the book clicked with me immediately, but of course I knew that without something like spaced repetition, the knowledge would evaporate once I finished the book.
So I thought, basically, what if I tried to teach myself using spaced repetition? A few months of (intermittent and usually figurative) blood, sweat, and tears, and here we are. I think it's working for me, and I hope it works for you too.