[.ca] How Computer Programming Works (ISBN 1893115232)

From Amazon.co.uk:
Consider, for a moment, a guy. This guy, about 40 years old, has worked all his life in a job that doesn't require much knowledge of computers, certainly not of how to write software. Now imagine that our guy decides to change career paths and learn computer programming. He goes and buys a book about a programming language, perhaps one that promotes itself as elementary. The book presents our hapless guy with recipes that he can follow, it's true, but it mostly confuses him with talk of APIs, linked lists, hashes and a whole lot of other stuff he doesn't really understand. "I can make it all work by following directions", our guy implores into the Void, "But I don't understand what I'm doing". This guy needs How Computer Programming Works. In this book, Daniel Appleman sets out to explain computer programming at a conceptual level, and he succeeds admirably. He ignores the peculiar characteristics of specific programming languages (leaving them for specialised books) and instead uses fantastic colour illustrations and lucid text to explain what goes unsaid among professional programmers. He also uses pseudocode--a sort of standardised, generic programming language--and examples in BASIC to back up his points. Though Appleman approaches programming from a mainly procedural angle (the book would be better with more coverage of object-oriented programming techniques, which are fundamentally different in many cases), the contents of this book will suit any beginning student of programming and computer science, our guy included. --David Wall

on my list of top 10 computer science books:
this book is a fine introduction to computing. imagine a book with cogent, well-illustrated explanations of topics like (1) what a variable is (2) linked lists (3) pointers.... ...that also discussed the plusses and minusses of various computer languages.... ...and that was useful to a professional programmer, and entertaining for his 13-year-old kid. that's this book. i occasionally teach introductory programming classes, and i've used this book as a source of handouts and overheads (within the bounds of "fair use" and the copyright laws, of course. :-) ) in my early days as a developer, i also pulled it off of the shelf more than once when i needed a quick graphical metaphor for something that i was trying to understand.

fundamental concepts on a silver tray:
A good book does not need to be complex. This one does a great job. You could read this book during one hour and learn more than in one semester of COS111. It is so simple. Comcepts are the most important thing to learn. They give meaning to programing. Without concepts, programing becomes meaningless.

Good intro to computer programming with lots of pictures:
I bought this book for a newphew in high school interested in computer programming. It is a good introduction with excellent diagrams and many examples, mostly in Visual Basic. Even an experienced programmer would enjoy the book.

As clear as it gets!:
This book explains the "magic" of computer programming as clearly as can be done. Outstanding use of graphics to illustrate difficult concepts. Concrete analogies to "real world" objects make the virtual world of programming much easier to wrap your mind around. Outstanding introduction for middle-school, high school, even beginning college level students. Very clearly written, not a lot of unnecessary words - just the right level of explanation to get you thinking in the right direction and to see what the graphics are illustrating. My 13-year old loved it, and finally understands a bit more of what his Dad does all day. I've been doing this for 15 years -- and even I got a better grasp of some things. Highly recommended.