(Part 4) Top products from r/gatech

So, when I was younger, I did attend one computer science related camp,

https://www.idtech.com

They have a location at Emory (which I believe I did one year) that was ok (not nearly as "nerdy"), and one at Boston which I really enjoyed (perhaps because I had to sleep on site). That being said, the stuff I learned there was more in the areas of graphic design and/or system administration, and not computer science. They are also quite expensive for only 1-2 weeks of exposure.

I felt it was a good opportunity to meet some very smart kids though, and it definitely lead me to push myself. Knowing and talking to people that are purely interested in CS, and are your age, is quite rare in high school. I think that kind of perspective can make your interests and hobbies seem more normal and set a much higher bar for what you expect for yourself.

On the other side of things, I believe that one of the biggest skills in any college program is an openness to just figure something out yourself if it interests you, without someone sitting there with you. This can be very helpful in life in general, and I think was one of the biggest skills I was missing in high school. I remember tackling some tricky stuff when I was younger, but I definitely passed over stuff I was interested in just because I figured "thats for someone with a college degree". The fact is that experience will make certain tasks easier but you CAN learn anything you want. You just may have to learn more of the fundamentals behind it than someone with more experience.

With that in mind, I would personally suggest a couple of things which I think would be really useful to someone his age, give him a massive leg up over the average freshman when he does get to college, and be a lot more productive than a summer camp.

One would be to pick a code-golf site (I like http://www.codewars.com) and simply try to work through the challenges. Another, much more math heavy, option is https://projecteuler.net. This, IMO is one of the best ways to learn a language, and I will often go there to get familiar with the syntax of a new language. I think he should pick Python and Clojure (or Haskell) and do challenges in both. Python is Object Oriented, whilst Clojure (or Haskell) is Functional. These are two very fundamental and interesting "schools of thought" and if he can wrap his head around both at this age, that would be very valuable.

A second option, and how I really got into programming, is to do some sort of web application development. This is pretty light on the CS side of things, but it allows you to be creative and manage more complex projects. He could pick a web framework in Python (flask), Ruby (rails), or NodeJS. There are numerous tutorials on getting started with this stuff. For Flask: http://blog.miguelgrinberg.com/post/the-flask-mega-tutorial-part-i-hello-world. For Rails: https://www.railstutorial.org. This type of project could take a while, there are a lot of technologies which interact to make a web application, but the ability to be creative when designing the web pages can be a lot of fun.

A third, more systems level, option (which is probably a bit more opinionated on my part) is that he learn to use Linux. I would suggest that he install VirtualBox on his computer, https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads. He can then install Linux in a virtual machine without messing up the existing OS (also works with Mac). He COULD install Ubuntu, but this is extremely easy and doesn't really teach much about the inner workings. I think he could install Arch. https://wiki.archlinux.org. This is a much more involved distribution to install, but their documentation is notoriously good, and it exposes you to a lot of command line (Ubuntu attempts to be almost exclusively graphical). From here, he should just try to use it as much as possible for his daily computing. He can learn general system management and Bash scripting. There should be tutorials for how to do just about anything he may want. Some more advanced stuff would be to configure a desktop environment, he could install Gnome by default, it is pretty easy, but a lot of people really get into this with more configurable ones ( https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn ). He could also learn to code and compile in C.

Fourth, if he likes C, he may like seeing some of the ways in which programs which are poorly written can be broken. A really fun "game" is https://io.smashthestack.org. He can log into a server and basically "hack" his way to different levels. This can also really expose you to how Linux maintains security (user permissions, etc. ). I think this would be much more involved approach, but if he is really curious about this stuff, I think this could be the way to go. In this similar vein, he could watch talks from Defcon and Chaos Computer Club. They both have a lot of interesting stuff on youtube (it can get a little racy though).

Finally, there are textbooks. These can be really long, and kinda boring. But I think they are much more approachable than one might think. These will expose you much more to the "Science" part of computer science. A large portions of the classes he will take in college look into this sort of stuff. Additionally, if he covers some of this stuff, he could look into messing around with AI (Neural Networks, etc.) and Machine Learning (I would check out Scikit-learn for Python). Here I will list different broad topics, and some of the really good books in each. (Almost all can be found for free.......)

General CS:
Algorithms and Data Structures: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/introduction-algorithms
Theory of Computation: http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Theory-Computation-Michael-Sipser/dp/113318779X
Operating Systems: http://www.amazon.com/Operating-System-Concepts-Abraham-Silberschatz/dp/0470128720

Some Math:
Linear Algebra: http://math.mit.edu/~gs/linearalgebra/
Probability and Stats: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/18-05-introduction-to-probability-and-statistics-spring-2014/readings/

I hope that stuff helps, I know you were asking about camps, and I think the one I suggested would be good, but this is stuff that he can do year round. Also, he should keep his GPA up and destroy the ACT.

I don't see any concrete advice, so I'll advise of what I did to prepare. I started 4 months away from my test date because I was still a full time student the whole time preparing. Got a 159/167/5.0 and was pretty stoked with my verbal score. I started out in the low 140s/high 130s (words r hard) and had to work a lot to bring that up. For math, I just ran through two practice tests in the beginning and that was enough to brush up on the math stuff (the only things I forgot were statistics related).

Materials

• Kaplan's GRE Prep Book (with online tests) http://www.amazon.com/GRE-Premier-2016-Practice-Tests/dp/1625231326/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1463072761&sr=8-1&keywords=kaplans+gre
  
  
• Roughly 1,000 flash cards and a large notebook for writing down words you don't know/essays/miscellaneous (I got one with dividers to split up 1. words I don't know 2. essay prep 3. essay writing 4. math equations I don't know)
  
  
• 5 bags of coffee and a shitty test score for motivation
  
  Process
  
  Writing: For this, I don't have much of a way of recommending how you prep. I have never been too great at writing itself, but you can learn a great deal from going through the book and googling extra essay prompts to organize your ideas. Organizing your ideas in an outline is imperative. Beyond that, the writing center at Tech might be worthwhile if you score below a 4.0 on your first test (it also depends what you're going to grad school for: I went into the medical field so writing is somewhat important, if you're going into engineering, you could pretty much get by with a 3.5 so long as the other scores are decent). Just work on organizing a good argument with brief but concrete examples. Read tons of example essays to figure out how to formulate your ideas.
  
  Verbal: This is what I sucked at. My vocabulary has always been horrifically bad, and I got by forever with saying "I'm an engineer, I don't need this shit!" The Kaplan book has good lists in the back. I made flash cards for the most used words as well as word roots to figure out words on the fly. Go through the appendix and write down all you don't know, start with that.
  
  Next, everytime you take a practice test, write down all of the words you didn't know on paper while you're taking the test, and make flash cards of those. I had a good 5-600 of word roots and words by the time I got done with a dozen practice tests and with how stupid the Kaplan book made me feel. Vocabulary is what got me the most, and is important for both the multiple choice as well as the reading comp. If you suck at reading comp. even after learning vocab, ask someone at the Writing Center for help. Reading/writing were never enough of a problem for me to seek out extra help, but I still wasn't great at them.
  
  Math: Just run through practice tests. Write down any formulas you forget from math. If you're struggling with this, idk how to help because I can't explain math. You should be fine coming from Tech. I made like 50 flash cards of formulas to run through the week before the test (things like permutations vs combinations always tripped me up in the way they were worded).
  
  TL;DR
  
  Practice. A lot. If your grad school of choice is competitive or your GPA isn't the greatest, you should treat this like a class in itself over the next few months. It helps if you can budget the extra $200 to just take it now to get a feel for it and get a score to see where you need to improve. You must wear headphones and they give you a full pat down each time you go in and out of the computer room. The guy running my session was upwards of late 70s, and he stood behind me during half of the test.

Sorry that other people are being harsh critics, but yeah man. Respectfully, a couple of these are pretty overpriced.

Thing is, most people would rather buy a new book from the store than buy a used book for barely less than retail. I suggest you lower the prices, especially keeping this in mind:

Astrodynamics sells new for $17: https://www.amazon.com/Fundamentals-Astrodynamics-Dover-Aeronautical-Engineering/dp/0486600610

Propulsion sells new for $25: https://www.amazon.com/Mechanics-Thermodynamics-Propulsion-Philip-Peterson/dp/8131729516/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1526807320&sr=1-2&keywords=mechanics+and+thermodynamics+of+propulsion+2nd+edition

Your edition of COE 3001 sells new for $113: https://www.amazon.com/Mechanics-Materials-James-M-Gere/dp/1111577730/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1526807508&sr=1-2&keywords=mechanics+of+materials+goodno and it's also not the current edition

Best of luck. And if you find someone looking specifically for the current edition of the Mechanics of Materials book, please send them my way!

I was ISYE so I'm not sure how much you are allowed to cross over being CS but I would absolutely recommend taking a regression course. ISYE also has some data analysis electives, but to me learning and mastering regression is a must.

BBUUTT my biggest recommendation is to start playing with data yourself. I am a "Data Scientist" and graduated from the MS Analytics program at Tech and still to this day I learn the most just from playing around with data sets and trying new techniques or learning new coding tools. Don't wait to take classes to jump in, just go.

Here are some great books to get started doing "data science" in R and Python.

R: Introduction to Statistical Learning (free!!)

Python: Python for Data Analysis

Here

Ubuntu is recommended, but you can use some other distro. However all of the support I'm doing is only for Ubuntu based distros. Some others have done things to get it working for other distros like Arch.

And here is the book

And as a bonus [here](https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B6g7zcZaFwPTVVI1eDBYcG1GbE0
) is a presentation I did last semester which includes an overview and some sample programs.

edit fixed 3rd link.

Read anything by Ferrol Sams.

The Cormoran Strike series (by Robert Galbraith aka JK Rowling) is phenomenal.

Beneath a Scarlet Sky is very good, and the Monuments Men and Saving Italy are really good, too. All three are based on the true stories of people during WWII (and Monuments Men is far, FAR better than the movie).

If you like historical fiction, you can't do better than James Michener (my favorites are The Source, Texas, and Caribbean), Leon Uris (read The Trinity series... slog to get started, but worth it), and Edward Rutherford (just read them all).

I did, yes. And economists much smarter than you tend to agree. If that's a bit above you though, here's an excellent picture book that can explain it to you.

If you want a better book for Calc 2, try this one:

http://www.amazon.com/Linear-Algebra-Introduction-Dennis-Schneider/dp/0024069108/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1303943455&sr=8-1

It was recommended to me when I took Calc 2, and it is the sole reason I got an A in the class. Also, it's like $2.00 so that's nice too.

FE Review Manual: Rapid Preparation for the Fundamentals of Engineering Exam by Michael R. Lindeburg is the book I'm currently using to study for it. It is still based on the old pen and paper test, but they do have a list of what chapters to use for each test here. It seems to be a good resource and covers the main parts of each section. People I work with who have taken the FE also used this book and passed, so it came recommended.

If you enjoyed this article, check out his Book "Ten men you meet in the huddle". I read it while I was at Tech and it helped me stay motivated.

https://www.amazon.com/Ten-Men-You-Meet-Huddle/dp/1933060719

You're 100% correct, but as someone who's had to fix a lot of HP laptops over the years, the thermal paste replacement mentioned above is always a good idea as well. HP has always used the worst thermal paste for their factory builds; after a year or two, you'll find it solidified and acting as an insulator rather than a heat conductor. If they used those stick-on thermal pads, it's even worse. The real question is why is it overheating? If the fan is moving, then either it can't move the heat because there's dust choking the heatsink fins, or it can't move heat because the heat is being trapped before it gets to the heatpipe. It's usually a combination of the two.

Also, not fixing this now means the fan will eventually burn itself out running at full blast like that. Better to fix it now than have to also buy a fan along with the thermal compound.

I recommend some thermal compound remover to clean up the existing stuff too. If it's HP's stock grease, it gunks up and gets very difficult to remove. This kit has both remover and new high-quality compound:
https://www.amazon.com/Arctic-Silver-Thermal-Compound-ArctiClean/dp/B002DILLMS/

or remover-only, if you already have the silver thermal:
https://www.amazon.com/ArctiClean-60ml-Kit-30ml/dp/B0007TOR08/

lol ok I understand the confusion, this is exactly what happens with class material it comes out just like my post did, incoherent. I need to finish an assignment don’t really have time to go into this right now but there are articles and book on the topic that you could read and see if they align with your experience on the ground or not...I think they do

https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2016/05/12/477687350/resisting-the-corporate-university-what-it-means-to-be-a-slow-professor


The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy https://www.amazon.com/dp/1487521855/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_hTsMDbM9TC68F

I initially learned Rails back in the day through a previous edition of this book, and found it a decent introduction. If you're already fluent in web programming and backend it may be a bit simplistic for your tastes, but it's a good introduction to "the Rails way" of doing things.

If you really want a deep dive on the Ruby language itself, far beyond what you'll need to get started on Rails apps, but what every mature developer should take the time to learn, David Flanagan's The Ruby Programming Language is a must-read.

By the way: don't knock the book until you try it. I think we've all had a bad experience with crappy, overpriced college textbooks, but professional reference books are a completely different story. It'll take less time than you think to make it cover-to-cover, and the organized, thorough presentation of a decent book ensures you'll come away with a complete understanding of the language that may even impress an interviewer when you're trying to get a job.

Not sure, but every time I see a book there that I want, it's cheaper on Amazon. link

This was the one I asked my parents to buy me for my birthday: http://www.amazon.com/Elenco-200-in-One-Electronic-Project-Lab/dp/B0002AHR04. I also bought a couple of Forrest Mims books as well to go with it.

For CS majors who might have a interview lined up already, try to make the time to read Cracking the Coding Interview. It's basically a TL;DR of CS 1332 with a lot of practice problems. Additionally, I found the behavioral and technical interview strategies very helpful.

Don't worry about how big the book is. Half of it is just problems and solutions. As a freshman, you probably only need to read the first 150 pages or so. Make sure to practice though!

And this one too...
http://www.amazon.com/Georgia-vs-Tech-Gridiron-Grudge/dp/1892514966/ref=pd_sim_sbs_b_1

We'll be teaching our daughter calculus when she arrives in November.

https://www.amazon.com/Introductory-Calculus-Infants-Omi-Inouye/dp/0987823914

Some are as easy to pick you can do it with a pen cap. A wire rope with a circular shrouded padlock is the hardest to steal, the wire is a pain to get through with a bolt cutter and the padlock is resistant to shimming

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