Should one study undergrad TCS materials before taking grad-level ones? (soft question) I am a 1st year PhD student. I got a bachelor's degree in CS but I didn't start learning TCS systematically until this year.
This dumb question came to me when I opened an undergrad complexity lecture watchlist after I forgot it for months, and realized that I had already learned the content from an &quot;advanced&quot; textbook. And I found things covered by the course were learned by myself within a much shorter time. That's perhaps a special case. But I noticed that undergraduate-level courses/materials cover more details and examples about the basic concepts than advanced ones, and I don't know if it's necessary to know such a kind of details.
So my real question starts here: should one skip undergraduate-level TCS courses/materials to save time, or do it step by step to reinforce knowledge?
Yes.
From my experience, going back to basics teaches you new things every time.
My students tough me the most.