4/11    I've been programming professionaly for about 4 years but my background
        is in the sciences, so sometimes I feel my knowledge of CS concepts
        and/or theory has a few holes.  Would you care to reccomend a book
        that would help me fill out areas I might have missed?  I'm not looking
        for a language book, or an "all about [compilers|databases|graphics]"
        but rather "these are the data structures, here are some smart
        algorithms, heres how to architect something".  --Thanks
        \_ Get a copy of CLR. Other algorithms/programming books I've
           like include 'Algorithms in C' by Sedgwick and 'Expert C
           Programming' by van der Linden.
           \_ Huh?  I tried STFW.
              \_ Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest, Intro to Algorithms  - yap
              \_ http://theory.lcs.mit.edu/~clr
           \_ What about Design Patterns?  Useful or hype?
              \_ Thumbs up from me. Not that we shouldn't learn how to write
                 them from scratch, but I think STL and Boost and design
                 patterns are all really useful for a wide range of software
                 problems these days.
        \_ Check out the lecture notes on MIT Open Courseware, excellent stuff! -ray
              \_ I thought DP was all hype. It did nothing for me,
                 but I've mostly been doing systems, network and
                 security programming. Might be useful if you are
                 doing application programming. FYI, my background
                 was science but I've been a coder for about 5 yrs
                 so a lot of stuff that I didn't know I picked up
                 by eiether taking courses via SITN or bumming books
                 from co-workers.
                 \_ Design Patterns are very useful.  Even if you don't know
                    anything about it you will notice much of your code
                    actually fit one or more of the design patterns once you
                    start reading it.  I am an application programmer.
              \_ What are Design Patterns?
                 \_ When you see the code of a large application,
                    sometimes you will wonder why it is written that
                    way, and how did whoever wrote it decide to write
                    it the way it is.  Design Patterns is the attempt
                    to systematize the above, as opposed to learning
                    it through experience or sheer intelligence.  At
                    least that is my understanding.
        \_ Check out the lecture notes on MIT Open Courseware, excellent
           stuff! -ray
           \_ http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical-Engineering-and-Computer-Science/6-170Laboratory-in-Software-EngineeringFall2001/LectureNotes/index.htm
           \_ http://tinyurl.com/53tpe (owc.mit.edu)
              check out lecture notes 12/13/14 on design pattern.