Beginning Programming [Paperback]

When the first chapter of a book on programming is titles 'What Is Programming' you get a pretty good idea of the level of the book. Combine this with the title 'Beginning Programming' and you have a pretty good idea of what's it all about.

This book is also set up to allow you to get into programing cheaply. It programs its examples using C++, Java, VBScript and JavaScript (along with a few references to other languages). These languages are available free for downloading over the internet. You also do not need a big, super powerful computer to do programming. Indeed, most of my own programming is done on an old Pentium II - 400 MHz machine that I bought for $55 (well, to be truthful, I added another $15 in memory).

Finally, as the authors point out, after you learn one language you know enough about the general structure of programming to be readily able to move to another language. After a couple of weeks working with this book, you could move up to another language in probably a couple of days.

This is indeed the simple way to get started in programming. I wish I'd had it when I started forty something years ago.

This book is likely to frustrate true beginners. In attempting to work through the excercises, the C++ complier the authors recommend refused to compile the sample code. Two frustrating hours later pursuing solutions on the Borland web site, I managed to create two configuration files, edit my environmental variables, and finally get the code to compile. Such geek gymnastics are certainly beyond most "beginners," and are likely to cause them to give up the whole idea of learning to code.

Shame on Borland for providing a compiler that was apparently never beta tested on XP(!), and shame on Wrox for failing to provide adequate instructions. There are a few answers of varying quality and coherance on their forum, but you shouldn't have to resort to the forum to run the very first compiled program in the book.

If you aren't familiar with how a compiler works BEFORE reading this book, you are likely to run aground sometime around Chapter 7. Save your money.

I'm a big fan of Wrox. The first computer I ever had way back in 1997 was a Wrox book on HTML. It was clear, concise (-seriously concise-), and not filled with the usual garbage that most computer books are filled with. I'm still building webpages 9 years later.

I'm a bit disappointed with this one, then, because, although it is wonderfully informative and useful, it just doesn't have that same no-nonsense zing that my first did. The book does exactly what it says: gives a good, solid introduction to programming for the beginner. It does its best at instilling enough foundation to create a future programmer who will instinctively follow best practices (drilling in basic concepts like binary, so presumably people won't do dumb things later on like allowing buffer overflows because they can't count). It introduces operators before it ever tells the student to start coding. All in all, it's a gentle, easy to grasp guide to the fundamentals of programming that anyone can understand.

So why the mild disappointment? The main downside to the book in my opinion is that they lean towards dumbing things down -too- much, at least on occasion. A couple of quintessential examples that come to mind early on are:

1) Figure 4.9 - a ridiculous icon of a computer with a magnifying glass in front of it. This is intended to show you "how data is stored in memory." About half the images in the book are completely useless in this regard.

2) Sentences like "Notice that in sci-fi... humans interface with computers and robots using spoken language? Being able to do that now would be sweet!"

Easy is an admirable trait in a book of this sort. Stupid is not. That said, I think the ease and usefulness overall outweigh the occasional absurdity, and I would recommend it to someone who has either had no programming or has tried it but finds themselves totally baffled by it (and who can generally override their innate gag reflex). It does what it says, and for that I suppose it deserves a hearty 4 stars. I just don't have the heart to give it that fifth one.