You Can Do It!: A Beginners Introduction to Computer Programming
Product Description
You’ll be Programming with C++ within the hour Find out just how easy it is to write computer programs! Want to start programming but don’t know where to start? Don’t worry! With a radically different approach to programming, author Francis Glassborow demystifies programming concepts, and shows you how to create real applications with C++. Working with computing novice Roberta Allen he teaches you the basic elements of programming and will hav… More >>
You Can Do It!: A Beginners Introduction to Computer Programming
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This book offers a great introduction to various kinds of computer programming. It is very easy to understand and the CD that comes with it provides hours of entertainment. It has helped me understand the software I own better and appreciate the hardwork that goes into programming. I am even considering taking courses in programming!
Rating: 4 / 5
In my experience, the hallmark of a true master of a field is his or her ability to write clear and concise introductions to the field in question, aimed at trainees and novices. What C++ is concerned, this text is a true masterpiece as it presents the core concepts clearly and concisely in a way that the novice has a chance to master.
One ingenious aspect which sets this book apart from the oters, is that the enclosed CD contains everything the novice needs to get started, including a C++ compiler and IDE. The author also includes a simple graphics package, which allows the student to start out programming graphics applications from day 1. This visual approach lets the student actually see the effects of the programs, as opposed to the more traditional approach to teaching C++, where operations on, say, text strings are more abstract. By starting out with visual programming, Glassborow postpones one major obstacle – problem abstraction – which might obfuscate the early learning process for the novice programmer.
While problem abstraction is a major part of computer programming, just achieving a rudimentary mastering of C++ requires an intense learning effort. This text’s focus on visual applications is a major step to focus the early learning efforts to where they are needed: Learning how to handle the IDE and how to get to grips with basic C++.
Rating: 5 / 5
This is another book in the spirit of “Who is afraid of C++” that came out a while back and also tried to teach a complete novice C++ via a correspondence between the book author and someone completely new to programming.
From what I”ve read it’s alot more accurate than the former since this book author is on the C++ standards committee so I noted few errors.
I really enjoyed the questions the novice asked at the end of the chapters since they were the same questions that I asked myself when first learning C++ and some of them are quite funny now that I have more C++ knowledge.
If you are a total novice though this book can get rough at times since the author covers quite a bit of material in each chapter. It’ probably take two readings from someone totally new to programming to get the most of it.
Especially, around chapter 4 the book gets exponentially difficult and I suppose most reader’s unless they had prior C++ experience or a mentor would give up at this point. The author didn’t help things any by refusing to provide the sourcecode for the chapter programs on the cd since he feels you should type them all up yourself to learn.
So, the other thing I really found issue with and the reason I’m knocking off 1 star is for the inclusion of a library that is closely tied to the IDE that is used throughout the book to provide graphics support and to make the programs more interesting. First off all the directions on setting it up are quite poor and if you want to use another IDE to run the programs you need to mess with the library sourcecode as I did to get it to work which would be quite a difficult task for a beginner!
So Mac and Linux user’s are left out in the cold since the author only provides support for Windows users so that may be a dealbreaker for some.
But if you want to learn C++ the way it’s supposed to be used and correctly this book will get you started.
Finally, if you are able to tough it out to the end of the book you will have built quite a few cool graphic programs including a LOGO turtle emulator.
Rating: 4 / 5
i found this book extreamly easy to use and to learn with even though every one says dont learn to program by starting with c++ i found it easy enough to learn it also comes with all the tools u need to start programming except a computer of course. one of my favorite things is the comments from the assistant author. it showed that anybody can really program if you have never programmed a computer at all this is a good place to start. The book only expects that u can read and no how to turn on a computer. if you can do those to things u can use the book
Rating: 5 / 5
I thought the autor was good at being informative and not overlooking anything for absolute beginners.
Although it was informative, I don’t think it was informative enough. The author could have written a good bit more detail into the book and given the reader a wider view of the C++ language. If you are considering buying this book, you should probably look somewhere else unless you have extremely little free time on your hands and want to take “smaller than normal” steps to becoming an advanced computer programmer.
Other than that, the author wrote this book well and didn’t make any noticeable errors(he had one or two “small” errors in some of the examples that could throw you off a little bit if you copy them and dont’t look through them to see if everything is correct and how it makes sense).
Rating: 4 / 5