Towards The First Dollar 💲
Hello again Internet friends, haven’t seen you in a year ;), just took a shower and I was wondering how the content of this post is transmitted to you in form of signals from my PC to the router, then through a fiber-optic cable to some ground wires to some other routers, eventually to some more wires and lastly at your mobile/laptop/pc screen. Perhaps some networking learning in 2026 will demystify this magic.
New year, New me era has begun, I think the hope that rises at the beginning of each year can sometimes be a good thing, I could finally wake up early after struggling for months due to a small dopamine shot of 1/1 date, perhaps hope is good thing Morgan Freeman
Let’s talk about new year plans
Table of content
2026 Orientation 🧭
As the post title implies, in this year I will try to shift my focus towards a more practical, instant feedback courses. What does this means?
Computer Science is a very vast field, from programming with its different flavours, to different computer architecture, operating systems, technologies and the list goes on and on. Some of the areas are more abstract and not very practical, like say compilers, it’s good to have some understanding of how the compilers work and do some experimentation, but let’s say you are tight on time, will you pick networking over compilers to land a work in web development, because it’s more related to the technologies you will be using (http, https, tcp, udp, ip etc..), and you will pick security over computer graphics for the same reason, I hope you get the idea.
Hence for the courses taking orientation I will pick those that will enrich me to be a good full stack web developer by the end of the year, so far I think those gonna be the courses for the year:
UCB CS162 - Operating Systems and System Programming (crucial for a backend engineer)
UCB CS168 - Introduction to the Internet for networking
MATH - AGAIN
I will be honest, I think I am dodging math at this point. Couple months ago I started calculus 1, did like 10 lectures or something, started the first exam of the course, failed terribly, figured out that something is wrong.
I think it was because I wasn’t doing much problems, MIT’s problems was more of conceptual ones (ones that are for making you understand the concept or derive the law - but we said we gonna shut up and calculate)
So, back to high-school way of learning math
Learn the concept/law → do some solved examples → do a ton of work problems → Take the final exam
One of the sauces that I’ve been coming through lately is Paul’s Online Math Notes, which had good opinions around, so I think it’s the way to go for Calc1 and 2.
To be fully focused and dedicated I will start them, inshaallah, in February and take the whole month for Math only, because this month I am busy with CS61C and don’t want to involve extra stuff with it until finish by hopefully this month’s end, apart from the ongoing Full Stack Open Course. So both will be halted after the current month
My way will be to study math in a compact form, just to acquire the Mathematical Maturity and be familiar with the concepts that further CS courses will need to build upon, so I think Calc1 and Calc2 can be done in a month with intensive studying. Not doable? Scott did it in two weeks, one for each course!
Hold up, why math? Here you go:
Calculus I
└── Calculus II (Vector Calculus)
├── Discrete Math
├── Linear Algebra
│ └── Computer Graphics
└── Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning
Time Investment
That’s it for this post, we just started the year so not much to talk about, but I just want to share that before the end of 2025 I have completed 1000+ hours self-studying computer science, it’s really magical how I went from someone who doesn’t know much about computers to someone who understands assembly (RISC-V and currently working on x86-64) and how the computer works on a fundamental level (building a RISC-V CPU here).
In addition to be acquainted with a handful of programming languages, CS concepts and skills.
ALL THIS HAPPENED IN A YEAR AND A HALF!
So my advice for you dear reader:
Time investment has a far huge impact than you think
That’s for today, until the next week :)