How to Design Programs : An Introduction to Programming and Computing

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.A second edition is now available. Processing simple forms of data. Students, teachers, and computers Numbers, expressions, simple programs Programs are function plus variable definitions Conditional expressions and functions Symbolic information Compound data, part 1: structures The varieties of data Syntax and semantics Processing arbitrarily large data. Compound data, part 2: lists More on processing lists Natural numbers Composing functions, revisited again List abbreviations More on processing arbitrarily large data. More self-referential data definitions Mutually referential data definitions Development through iterative refinement Processing two complex pieces of data Local definitions and lexical scope Abstracting designs. Similarities in definitions Functions are values Designing abstractions from examples Designing abstractions with first-class functions Mathematical examples Defining functions on the fly Generative recursion. A new form of recursion Designing algorithms Variations on a theme Algorithms that backtrack The cost of computing and vectors Accumulating knowledge. The loss of knowledge Designing accumulator-style functions More uses of accumulation The nature of inexact numbers Changing the state of variables. Memory for functions Assignment to variables Designing functions with memory Examples of memory usage The final syntax and semantics Changing compound values. Encapsulation Mutable structures Designing functions that change structures Equality Changing structures, vectors, and objects. 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 skillscritical reading, analytical thinking, creative synthesis, and attention to detailthat 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. A second edition is now available.

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.

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. - Publisher.