Everyone should learn to design programs

books:


	• How to Design Programs: An Introduction to Programming and Computing Matthias Felleisen, Robert Bruce Findler, ... The MIT Press, 2001 - 720 pages average customer review:based on 10 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Everyone should learn to design programs

As a programming do-it-yourselfer I've had many conflicting responses to this text -- it's didactic style, its attention to detail, its sometimes patronizing tone, its rigor and broad scope and at the same time its immersion in minutia and quiddities I have never encountered in 'computer books' I had ever perused. Perhaps it's my liberal arts background, or love 'em/hate 'em sensitivity to all those broad stiff-spined textbooks I had carried in back-packs since childhood, combined with a disdain for the authoritative stilted style these educators exude -- despite their patent love of their subject. I felt at once both patronized and condescended to.
From the very start of their journey into a detailed six step-by-step process that show the reader how to analyze problem statements, how to formulate goals, make up examples, outline a solution, and test a solution the authors proclaim their pedagogical ends: "We [...] believe that the study of program design deserves the same central role in general education as mathematics and English. Or, put more succinctly, everyone should learn how to design programs..." This is not a textbook, this is a revolutionary pamphlet calling for educational reform. I had read nothing like this in the tens of 'Dummies' and 'In 24 Hours' books I had exposed myself to. One part priggish, two parts pedagogic. I often found myself asking for whom was it written? First-year college student?, ambitious would-be high-school programmer wanna-be? Math mavens? Surely not a middle-aged bookish clerk who tastes run more to Turgenev and Dostoevsky than Turing and Dijkstra. But then I demanded more than mere anonymous web-lurking from my lowly pc. I remember myself many years ago trying to learn BASIC on a massive time-share computer and telling myself surely there was had to be more magic to computing than this. Well, after reading more texts and having had to unlearn the 'Dummies' and the 'In 24 hours' style of disinformation I had finally found the marrow of a discipline that is as demanding as any I had ever come across and as vexing as any artistic rigor I had ever been inspired by. Come be confused, come be amused, amazed and intellectually abused. Sorely, if I find I have little talent for this excruciatingly logical endevour, I have also found a full-blown appreciation of such daunting computational cheekiness. Much to learn here, and this is only the "core subject of a liberal arts education." What had I been wasting my time on all those years as a professional student?

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The joy of learn programming

Great book! I liked the way the author approaches how to begin designing programs. I am half-way through the book and I am finding it very entertaining. Yeap! I recommend this book.

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Above and Beyond

This order was handled above and beyond the call of duty. They handled everything, including the problem of USPS losing the package. No questions were asked and the book was reshipped immediately. Thank You for the great service.

Excellent Book for Rookies and Veterans

I have been professionally developing software for about 5 years. I found this book to be one of the most useful and helpful books to help my coding skills. Even though I have been programming professionally for a few years and have a computer science degree, I learned a lot of new neat concepts from this book. It also helped to me to remind me of all the basic good practices that I have forgotten.

It is also an excellent book for beginners. The books doesn't use a popular programming language like Java to accomplish its goals. Instead, it uses Scheme so the student can focus on the concepts rather than syntax. It also teaches great concepts and breaks the problem down on how to solve various problems. Also it isn't "hardcore" like SICP-- it is very friendly to non-MIT level people.

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A Recipe for Programming

This book opened my eyes. I'd finished a Ph.D. in computer science, and had a decent exposure to quite a few programming languages and paradigms, before coming across this book. I was surprised to start working through this introductory book, and find myself learning new things! The book transformed my approach to programming.

From page one, HtDP starts talking about good program design, and gives a methodical approach. Until this, I'd always thought programming books were "here are ten small example programs; go write ten more." That's hardly teaching. But HtDP builds up a straightforward design recipe, to guide programs along. If I get stuck or have a mistake in my program, 90% of the time I realize it's because I strayed from the book's recipe. The approach is language-independent, although some programming environments make it much easier to implement the design recipe; the book provides links to a good (free) Scheme environment, which it uses for its code examples too. (I've come to use that environment day-to-day). My code--in any language--has become much more robust, and when I do have a bug I usually locate it early, thanks to this book.

In addition, HtDP made me think about things I'd taken for granted: How is assignment to a variable fundamentally different than assignment to a structure's field? Even, *why* do I use assignment statements in certain situations, instead of choosing a functional approach? How often do my programs actually need the efficiency of imprecise floating-point arithmetic, vs using bignums which totally liberate me from numerical inaccuracy?

Although the text is available on line, I cherish my hardcopy. This is a book to first learn programming from, and one to revisit every five years.

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reviews: page 1, 2

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.

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