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Product Description
Book Description
This introduction to programming places computer science in the core of a liberal arts education. Unlike other introductory books, it focuses on the program design process. This approach fosters a variety of skills--critical reading, analytical thinking, creative synthesis, and attention to detail--that are important for everyone, not just future computer programmers.The book exposes readers to two fundamentally new ideas. First, it presents program design guidelines that show the reader how to analyze a problem statement; how to formulate concise goals; how to make up examples; how to develop an outline of the solution, based on the analysis; how to finish the program; and how to test. Each step produces a well-defined intermediate product. Second, the book comes with a novel programming environment, the first one explicitly designed for beginners. The environment grows with the readers as they master the material in the book until it supports a full-fledged language for the whole spectrum of programming tasks.All the book's support materials are available for free on the Web. The Web site includes the environment, teacher guides, exercises for all levels, solutions, and additional projects.
About the Author
Robert Bruce Findler is Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Northwestern University.
Matthew Flatt is Associate Professor in the School of Computing at the University of Utah.
Shriram Krishnamurthi is Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Brown University.
Getting Started We learn to compute at a young age. Read the first page
Concordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Should be read by Everyone who wants to program.,
This review is from: How to Design Programs: An Introduction to Programming and Computing (Hardcover)
Have you ever looked at other people's codes and said to yourself something like "No... this isn't the way it should be written!". Or, worst yet, have you ever been asked by someone who wants you to read his/her codes and tell him/her what does it do? Both things happened quite often, though. The problems are mainly because they don't know how to "design" their programs properly. Being able to progam doesn't mean being to design/organize a good code at all. And being good at finding/inventing algorithms for problem solving doesn't mean that either. One another thing, I (maybe just only me, I don't know) think that C shouldn't be taught as the first language (at least, not anymore). This is mainly because, in C, you can hardly express yourself. Also, C codes look cryptic to those new to programming. And you must know a lot, and practice a lot, (that takes a lot of time, friend) to be able to express what you want. This book, using Scheme (a modern dialect of Lisp) as the language of choice. I, personally, agree of choosing it. Scheme was designed in the way such that programmers can focus on what they want to express, rather than imprementation details. From my own experience, I became a better programmer after learning it. (I was already a C++ programmer by that time. I just have to use Lisp on my study/research). One thing that I like is that, it focused on how to "design" programs, not just how to program, while college classes are mostly focused on how to write programs. No matter how students write their codes, if it could run, then it is fine. Then, I think, a lot of people do have ability to program, a lot are good at it. However, the number of people who knows how to design programs are much lesser. And this would result in something like those silly examples at the beginning of this review. Therefore, this book had emphasized on quite an important thing. And the last thing to say about this one is: MIT Press' textbooks are very high-quality, and this one is not an exception. It is very easy to read and to understand. And, even the html version is available at the book's official homepage, it is nice to have the printed version. How to "design" programs is very important for every CS major people, and is important to everyone else in general (to program your "everyday life schedule", etc). Whether you want to become a professional programmer (write codes for living, etc) or not.
5.0 out of 5 stars
the best resource for a college-level introduction,
By "paul@hal.org" (Boston MA USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: How to Design Programs: An Introduction to Programming and Computing (Hardcover)
Eric Raymond writes in "How to be a hacker" that learning Lisp will make you a better programmer for the rest of your days. And this book shows why. With Lisp (actually Scheme, but never mind that), your programs match your problem statement. Programming is no longer a mystical experience where "it suddenly works". With this book (and Scheme) you understand *why* it works. In this day and age, it is exactly the book that freshmen should see .. especially those who think they already know how to program. Thanks for writing this book. It will make my teaching easier.
5.0 out of 5 stars
This is "the book" on programming,
By A Customer
This review is from: How to Design Programs: An Introduction to Programming and Computing (Hardcover)
This book is going to be a classic. Unlike other introductory books on programming, it focuses on ideas not examples. It teaches students to organize their thoughts. It emphasizes thinking through problems. It pushes students to formulate concise comments, illustrate them with concrete examples, and test their programs systematically and automatically. I have not seen anything like this before. If you want to know the "why" and not just play with examples, buy this book! Note: It uses Scheme, which isn't widely used in industry (yet?) but don't let this deter you. The language is free, and it is very simple.
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