How should I go about learning CS?
jsmcgd: What do you want to ultimately achieve? Do you want to become a hacker or do you want to know about computer science for intellectual gratification? While these options certainly aren't mutually exclusive, they can however be very distinct.If you want to be a productive programmer there is no substitution for programming experience. In the same way knowing a lot of music theory won't make you a great concert pianist without years of practice.Computer science theory will allow you to attempt some problems beyond the reach of intuition. However a great deal has been achieved by people just having a go.I don't think there is any one answer. There is no definitive example of a computer scientist or hacker. I'd recommend just getting stuck in. Try many different things. Find out what interests you and then read the relevant books. You'll go farthest if you're doing something you enjoy not by adhering to some consensus from a disparate bunch of usually jaded hackers :)