Learn to Program, 2nd Ed: A Book Review

“The first section of the Introduction showed me that author
Chris Pine (as far as I know, no relation to the actor playing
James Kirk in the current Star Trek film) is a person after my own
heart. He compares the writing of instructions on making a PB&J
sandwich to writing a computer program. One of my “issues” is
writing good tutorials for the correct audience. The instructions
on how to make a PB&J sandwich differ, depending on if your
audience is a 5 year old child vs. a 35 year old adult, for
instance. I heard something of my own “voice” in those particular
paragraphs, as Pine outlined the set of instructions pretty much
the same way I would.

“Pine almost immediately answered one of my questions (Why
Ruby?) in the Introduction. The answer is completely pragmatic:
“Ruby programs tend to be short”. He compared the same task written
in Java and Ruby. Ruby was just a little “blip” compared to the
several lines of code Java required to do the same thing (print
“Hello Word”, as if that were inventive). In the “Getting Started”
section, I ignored the instructions for installing a text editor
and Ruby for Windows and Mac, and honed in on Linux. Easy stuff.
Everything was already on my Ubuntu box. Time to move on to the
first lesson.”

Complete Story