How to Design Programs: An Introduction to Programming and Computing [Hardcover]

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.
And also, several times, I saw many people just playing around with the * and & (well, the pointer-dereferencing, and address-taking symbol in C/C++), adding one more, deleting one off, to see which will make their programs work. (Sometime, it just works by miracle...)

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.