Where Can I Gain Advanced Computer Knowledge?

[Dankgravy]

This is not in relation to ICMAG in any way. I have been meaning to ask this question for a while, so please don't bring any drama in here. I honestly just want to learn.

That being said, where does one go to obtain advanced computer knowledge that is not a class? Is there like an ICMAG for computer nerds? haha. I consider myself better than most with computers, but I want to know as much about computers as I do about growing..

I know that I could probably Google some pretty good sites, but without having advanced knowledge of a subject it is hard to separate the good sites from the bad ones. A few people on here seem to have a good grasp of computer knowledge and would love if you could point me in the right direction

 

[In~Plain~Site]

How do you learn the restaurant business? A: Wash dishes

It really depends on if you're a reader or a 'doer'....I'm of the age where computers were not a concern (code for not invented yet) when we were in school, so pretty much self-taught.

I'm not extremely advanced, but much further along then my peers.I just had to pick the areas of interest that intrigued me, and dig in.

 

[PhenoMenal]

You don't need to go to any class to learn anything about computers, it's the one field where literally everything is online just waiting for you. You can of course however do online courses if you're struggling in regards to teaching yourself what you want to learn. But just with anything, you don't become "advanced" by reading a few books ... it takes practice and patience ... better known as years of experience.

Computing has so many diverse subfields though ... perhaps you're interested in 2d graphics like Photoshop, or 3d graphics, or networking, or programming, or databases, statistics, website development, etc etc it goes on and on ... you should think about what you ENJOY doing the most, and head down that road.

Then simply google away for beginners/learning stuff, and we'll see you again in five years

 

[The Phoenix]

Usenet Newsgroups

alt.binaries.e-book.technical

Ebooks and video training for free if you desire it.

 

[KonradZuse]

You don't need to go to any class to learn anything about computers, it's the one field where literally everything is online just waiting for you. You can of course however do online courses if you're struggling in regards to teaching yourself what you want to learn. But just with anything, you don't become "advanced" by reading a few books ... it takes practice and patience ... better known as years of experience.

Computing has so many diverse subfields though ... perhaps you're interested in 2d graphics like Photoshop, or 3d graphics, or networking, or programming, or databases, statistics, website development, etc etc it goes on and on ... you should think about what you ENJOY doing the most, and head down that road.

Then simply google away for beginners/learning stuff, and we'll see you again in five years

The thing is that even though a lot of it is on the internet, you need to know how to use it, and be able understand it. As a computer scientist myself, I can take bits of code off the internet, but it means nothing if you don't understand it all.

MY advice is to figure out what you want to do, and learn from there on the web about it.

 

[smokefrogg]

try to find a particular area that really piques your interest, from there get as many books, ebooks, videos, etc. etc. as you can and keep on DOING it and reading and learning and DOING and DOING!

there are messageboards, newsgroups, irc chats and more for the area that you will be interested in. when you go to these places, make sure you do your part of the leg work, research and trying and more research before you start barraging people with questions. if you let it be known that you are putting effort forth and that you aren't a know it all, you'll get folks wanting to pitch in a hand and help pretty quick, if you fail to do this you'll get folks telling you to RTFM and maybe GTFO

 

[Stress_test]

Computers are a lot like building a brick house: You need to lay the foundation before you begin laying the first course of bricks.
Once that is accomplished you can learn the next steps.

Each layer that is learned, makes it easier to learn the next.

 

[HighDesertJoe]

Computers are a lot like building a brick house: You need to lay the foundation before you begin laying the first course of bricks.
Once that is accomplished you can learn the next steps.

Each layer that is learned, makes it easier to learn the next.

You talking DOS? hehe

 

[smokefrogg]

i use dos type commands all day at work, love batch scripts

 

[Stress_test]

You talking DOS? hehe

That does kinda bring a chuckle.
But it's true also. Anybody who worked on computers when we had dos and even MS3.0, and 95, and 98, appreciates the simplicity of the old operating systems. Most of what I know about computers was gained off of that foundation.

 

[DiscoBiscuit]

Dos is quite popular in business. The 'batch' smokefrog speaks of is often used to reconcile bank transactions on daily basis. Ever deposited after 2pm and your amount didn't clear until the next bank day? It's probably a dos batch that somewhat delayed the transaction. But it's far less difficult to manage than real-time bookkeeping.

 

[smokefrogg]

ooooh as in "close your batches out!" i have to tell accounting to do that in their general ledger software before we do any changes on it's backend database

actually what i was talking about was a different kind of batch. a .bat file, on windows systems you can create a text file, fill it with the dos/cmd prompt commands you'd like it to execute, then run the batch file

so let's go back to that general ledger system, sometimes it has a locking issue and will not allow additional folks to connect to it, what has to happen is that all users must stop the client application on their end to clear the lock, the client often will not allow them to close it, it will not be displayed on screen as it is crashed but it is still running in the background

to solve this little issue i have a batch file that goes through a list of computers and kills the running process in the background, it's very simple and basically is this:
pskill \\accountant001 stupidprogram.exe
pskill \\accountant002 stupidprogram.exe
etc. etc., you can create a list and just feed pskill the list to which would be cleaner as you'd only need one line of code then

what is it doing:
pskill - this is the program i am using, it can kill a running program on a remote computer system provided you have administrative access to the remote computer
\\accountant001 - this is the name of the remote computer i want to run pskill on
stupidprogram.exe - this is the name of the program that is crashed yet still running in the background that i need to kill

for fun one could just as easily do:
pskill \\accountant001 firefox.exe - this would kill their firefox session if they're just watching youtube or f'ing around on icmag all day

there are lots of little command line programs for various systems, using batch files or bash on mac/unix/linux systems, you can setup a lot of automation and whatnot to help you! for instance i have one that'll take pictures of the user's screen every minute all day long, that's helped us to identify a lot of issues with certain problem users at the office

so you'd have the lines of code in a text file, saved with .bat extension, double clicking this will cause the commands to run

 

[DiscoBiscuit]

... actually what i was talking about was a different kind of batch. a .bat file, on windows systems you can create a text file, fill it with the dos/cmd prompt commands you'd like it to execute, then run the batch file

I believe I used to do something similar to batch windows user-data to Novel on IBM AS400 servers. Wow, that was 16 years ago.

 

[Yes4Prop215]

i really want to learn how to make websites...i used to make a bunch with geocities back when i was younger, but now all this html shit has be confused as fuck...

 

[ColoradoOG]

i really want to learn how to make websites...i used to make a bunch with geocities back when i was younger, but now all this html shit has be confused as fuck...

If your really interested in learning or brushing up on the various different web languages check out w3schools.com. Its all per standard not like crappy coded websites like myspace. Covers quite a bit like html,css,xml,php,server scripting, browser scripting, ect. It also has tests areas to practice coding from stratch.

By the way w3schools is all free

 

[bock, bock]

At Derek Zoolanders 'School For Kids Who Can't Read Good (and wan't to learn how to do other things good)'

 

[BigWillyDee]

If your really interested in learning or brushing up on the various different web languages check out w3schools.com. Its all per standard not like crappy coded websites like myspace. Covers quite a bit like html,css,xml,php,server scripting, browser scripting, ect. It also has tests areas to practice coding from stratch.

By the way w3schools is all free

best advice for learning website dev....


steps needed in no particular order and there is alot more but for the most part

learn html, html5, javascript, flash action script, css, photoshop, c, c++, etc OR buy dreamweaver and not really learn anything

 

[BigWillyDee]

At Derek Zoolanders 'School For Kids Who Can't Read Good (and wan't to learn how to do other things good)'

thats where i went but the school was too small.....

 

[Kitana]

best advice for learning website dev....


steps needed in no particular order and there is alot more but for the most part

learn html, html5, javascript, flash action script, css, photoshop, c, c++, etc OR buy dreamweaver and not really learn anything

C++ can be very frustrating to a noob