Hi everyone! I’m starting a Bootcamp at General Assembly to become a software engineer! I’ve heard that boot camps really only prepare you for Software Engineering in the present but don’t equip you in the fundamental concepts and knowledge that it takes to truly become a very good Software Engineer. With this in mind, I’m looking to take a few core cs classes whilst in my Bootcamp to help sharpen my skills. Can anyone recommend any good core cs classes to take at a Community college that can help with your understanding of CS as a whole? Thank you n advance!
If you have zero experience, learning a programming language should be first. You’ll definitely get this in the bootcamp though.
Once that’s in place, look into a course on Data Structures, if you’d like to learn a bit of the theory behind that. In short, data structures are ways to store and access data in memory that have proven useful in a variety of programming languages.
You’ll likely learn these in your bootcamp in some fashion as well, depending on the language(s) that are taught.
For example, a map might be called a dictionary, associative array, hashmap, or look-up table. They’re all effectively the same, with subtle differences in how they are built under the hood, by respective programming languages.
Next to that, a class on algorithms would be interesting. This is sometimes wrapped into one course with data structures, so maybe you’ll get a 2 for 1. Keeping in mind that “algorithms” are just “instructions for doing things”, this course will touch on generally useful patterns that you’ll find to build solutions to problems that come up relatively frequently in software. You’ll also learn about how to identify problems that we know have no efficient solution (where “efficient” has a specific definition), so you can know to not bother trying.
Third I would find something on design patterns. This will get into how to structure your code to best allow for extensions or maintenance of your systems in the longer term.
Good luck!
thank you this is helpful!
Freecodecamp has an entire page and youtube videso on this, which you can find on Free codecamp cs50
- This is one of the most recommended course out on the internet and if you wish to take the entire courses series you can find on edx cs50, best to begin with Introduction to Computer Science and then move to CS50’s Web Programming with Python and JavaScript since you have focus on web development.
Hope this helps 
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Thank you! I most definitely will look into it!