Candopi Programming 101 : How to Learn Algorithms

 Candopi Programming101 

HOW TO LEARN ALGORITHMS

PART 1: Selection

1. You select by reputation, looks and feels.

2.You select by running a given code. These days you get about 3000-plus new math research papers every week.
  In biology/medicine field, according Yancopolous(of Rengenron), 60 to 90 % research reports are either irrelevant or wrong! 

PART 2: Learning
These great scientists disagree:

1. I work on/with the paper : Feynman.
2. Pencil-paper simulation is the most painless method to learn algorithms: Donald Knuth

3. No scientist thinks in equations: Einstein.
4. After paralysis, Stephen Hawking worked even better without pencil and paper.: An American contemporary physicist with Hawking
5. With certain types of problems, once a student picks up paper to solve, he loses the ability to solve it : Edgar Dijkstra.

Both groups are right. 

(1) You must run the code on paper. 
(2) But at certain spots, that will get you into trouble (just as Dijkstra warned.) 
Then, you run it in your mind, especially the conditions, corner cases, edge cases. 


REMEMBER the whole field is small. Technology moves super-slowly, as Steve Jobs kept saying.
So if you cannot learn an algorithm today, it means nothing.

Learning it today or learning it 3 months later  or 3 years later, makes ZERO difference.
These algorithms are invented or discovered 1 in every decade. You have time.