Studying to be a programmer

[izard]

I studied physics in university, and I only had 3 programming related courses: numeric methods in Fortran, Operating systems, and CS 101 (finite automata, Turing machines, etc).

During last ~19 years working as a programmer full time I learned some tricks of our trade. But now I am thinking what would it take me today, if I was 18 y.o. and if I wanted to get just enough CS theory to understand how things work without formally studying CS.

I think just four books is enough: Aho&Ulman (compilers), Kormen(algorithms), Henessy&Patterson(hardware), and Tannenbaum (OS and networks). Am I missing something?

Upd: based on comments: Mao(crypto), Brooks(projects)

Comments

[outputlogic]

>> I think just four books is enough...

That was exactly the reason I went to study Electrical Engineering instead of CS. It took many more than four books and Master's degree to learn some small part of EE reasonably well.

[izard]

well, I missed pre-requisits for these 4 books. and in a comment right above, I was told that I miss too much math :)

But yes, EE is real engineering, and programming - just maybe.