How to Design Programs ─ An Introduction to Programming and Computing

This introduction to programming places computer science in the core of a liberalarts education. Unlike other introductory books, it focuses on the program design process. Thisapproach fosters a variety of skills--critical reading, analytical thinking, creative synthesis, andattention to detail--that are important for everyone, not just future computer programmers.The bookexposes readers to two fundamentally new ideas. First, it presents program design guidelines thatshow the reader how to analyze a problem statement; how to formulate concise goals; how to make upexamples; how to develop an outline of the solution, based on the analysis; how to finish theprogram; and how to test. Each step produces a well-defined intermediate product. Second, the bookcomes with a novel programming environment, the first one explicitly designed for beginners. Theenvironment grows with the readers as they master the material in the book until it supports afull-fledged language for the whole spectrum of programming tasks.All the book's support materialsare available for free on the Web. The Web site includes the environment, teacher guides, exercisesfor all levels, solutions, and additional projects.

Shriram Krishnamurthi is Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Brown University.