I feel muddled in my mind and unable to express myself very clearly, and maybe that's relevant for this whole endeavour, but here's what I've managed to scrabble together in the form of replies.
Cant comment on the programming, but I suspect its the same...High level Physics isnt just something you can "pick up". You will probably get a decent grounding by this approach, but good tuition and a lot of problem solving practice is needed to "learn" the subject in terms of the methods underpinning understanding. By all means have a god read around the subject - I really hope it stimulates you enough to take a few classes.
I guess you're right, but what are my options? Not to take classes, certainly. Here in Russia you don't generally choose what to study, and where I study right now physics is sparse and almost all out because it's my last year. I think I'll try my current idea for a couple of months and see if it works out any way. If it doesn't maybe I'll think of another subject.
One way to find out what books are useful is to take a look at the course sites for important universities and see what books are mandatory and recommended for their course. Most university grade books do a pretty good job at explaining their course matter, though they may cost you a bit.
Sorry, I don't know how to search for books this way - there's so many universities, so many courses and their sites aren't very clear.
To get a better grasp of physics, without going to much into the esoteric, I suggest Resnick & Haliday's two-volume physics coursebook. It does require some mathematical knowledge(secondary school-level should do for most parts, basic differentiation and integration helps but is not necessary), but the main advantage for a newcomer to physics is that it's written in a very non-technical way, with lots of historical background, detailed descriptions of experiments and generally more text than equations.
Richard Feynman's transcribed lectures are a magnificent introduction to uni-level physics, but unlike the previous, are more to the point and are dependent on some higher maths knowledge.
For a less general, more popular-science approach, you could try Stephen Weinberg's The First Three Minutes about the beginings of the universe, or A.Einstein's own Relativity(he wrote a popularised version).
Grabbing pretty much any university-level introductory coursebook on cosmology or astrophysics can grant you lots of insights on the subjects, even if you skip most of the maths contained therein.
I don't think beginner physics is right for me, firstly because I'm only interested in specific fields and some others bore me; secondly because my knowledge is very uneven and there's going to be concepts I know well and ones I'm ignorant about... So I think I'll go with cosmology and astrophysics. Yeah, finally found out what my fields of interest are called.
For learning about AI programming, this will be a great start: https://www.ai-class.com/home/
It's an online Stanford course about modern AI taught by a guy who worked on autonomous cars and another who literally wrote the book on AI (Norvig was a co-author of Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach; essentially the book on AI programming). It's also nice as it does have a lot of questions about the material w/ explanations if you didn't grasp the material. Course videos are on the left side of the page.
Am I right to think that starting with books that deal directly with AI isn't a bad idea?
For the math side of physics, I highly recommend that you start learning some linear algebra and real analysis (to help you get into solutions of differential equations). I hear it helps a lot.
Also, it's really, really, really fun, and linear algebra is also important for all kinds of programming and optimization.
Linear algebra and real analysis, got it. Well, I expect it to fall through tremendously here. Let's hope it's as fun as you describe and there are books in the library by people who write well.
Author
Topic: Learning physics and programming AI (Read 1800 times)