I’ve been thinking about this statement in particular: ‘If you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide.’ People naturally seem to gravitate to the logical contraposition: If P, then Q. Therefore if !Q, then !P. If you have something to hide, then you MUST have done something wrong. Drawing from this logical statement, they infer that anyone who even tries to hide anything MUST be doing something wrong.
It seems obvious to me, however, that not all people who attempt to hide things have done something wrong. Where is the logical error? Is it in the inversion of ‘nothing’ and ‘something’? It’s been a long time since my symbolic logic courses involving the negation of universal quantification.
Based on JMiller’s statements regarding ‘prerequisites’, it implies that he is seeking college-level courses in computer programming, and attempting to pass the classes to get access to the advanced Computer Programming classes in a C.S. degree. As a C.S. major, I can assure you that Calculus is considered a prerequisite to many programming courses. Computer Science is (still!) considered to be primarily a Math degree.
@JMiller: I regret to inform you that RolfAndreassen is correct in most other regards, however. If you want to learn computer programming, do programming. Academic Computer Science is purely about the theory of computers—I managed to achieve a degree in C.S. with less knowledge in how to program computers than when I started, because the entire degree is made up of math theorems stacked up on top of each other. I know how to design a computer from transistors and write a programming language and operating system for it—you might be surprised how seldom that actually comes up in the real world. ;)
If you do want to learn Theory, then by all means, focus on math. If you want to learn Programming, then you find symbolic logic more helpful—my Philosophy 101 courses on symbolic logic are far, far more helpful to me in my programming (even today!) than any of my C.S. courses ever were.
I’ve seen https://www.khanacademy.org/cs to be a highly valuable resource if you want to learn programming. They’ve got some very potent innovations there, such as an in-website programming environment. It’s very nifty for beginning programmers. I’d recommend checking it out.