do you guys help newbies??

[Robin Munn]

malik m <malik_martin at hotmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 27 Nov 2002 21:16:19 GMT, malik m <malik_martin at hotmail.com>
> wrote:
> 
>>On Wed, 27 Nov 2002 14:38:34 -0600, John Hunter
>><jdhunter at ace.bsd.uchicago.edu> wrote:
>>
>>>>>>>> "malik" == malik m <malik_martin at hotmail.com> writes:
>>>
>>>    malik> i didnt to import that yet but i will try even tho i think
>>>    malik> the program did what i want it to:)
>>>
>>>What do you think your mpg is if you drive 3 miles on a tank that
>>>holds 2 gallons?  What does your program tell you it is .....
>>>
>>>John Hunter
>>
>>
>>hmm yea i see what you're saying... ok i'll put it in.
> 
> 
> yea i see now. this is one of the new features of 2.2.2 that my deitel
> book told me about isnt it? is the deitel boook that bad? 
> i know that the end of chapter tests are getting rediculously hard and
> they are testing me on things they havent even taught me. i dont think
> this is for a newbie, this book...

I would recommend the book _How to Think Like a Computer Scientist_:

    http://www.ibiblio.org/obp/thinkCSpy/

which you can read entirely on-line, for free!

The reason I would recommend this book is because programming is more
than just learning the basics of if/else statements and while loops. One
of the most important programming skills to learn is problem analysis:
looking at a problem ("Hmm, I want to write a program that will
calculate miles per gallon") and figuring out not just one way to do it,
but several ways to do it, and deciding which way is best. ("I could ask
the user to type in the mileage and the gallons. But what if he already
has that information in a file? Or what if he wants not just the average
miles per gallon, but also a graph of the different miles/gallon rates
he got at different times? And...")

Programming is more of an art or a craft than a science. (That's why one
of the most famous books in computer science is called "The Art of
Computer Programming"!) There are skills, ways of thinking about
problems, that can be taught, although they are best refined by
experience. This book -- _How to Think Like a Computer Scientist_ --
attempts to teach those skills.

-- 
Robin Munn <rmunn at pobox.com>
http://www.rmunn.com/
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