Customer Reviews

A Balanced Introduction to Computer Science

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There are generally two courses for beginners in computing. "Introduction to Computers" is usually designed for people who know very little about computers and are interested in using them in their daily life. While "Introduction to Computer Science" covers some of the same material, it is designed for those who want to know how computers work, and perhaps even take some courses in computer science. This book is written for the second type of course.
Programming is introduced via HTML, which is in complete agreement with what I tell everyone who expresses an interest in learning to program. HTML is easy to understand, demonstrates some of the ideas of advanced programming and the feedback is immediate. Furthermore, initial programs can be small and since the student will most certainly be familiar with surfing the web, the results will make sense to them.
What most people consider to be true programming, writing code with variables, functions, if constructs, loops and user interaction, are introduced with JavaScript. This is also a sound decision, JavaScript is powerful enough to introduce the basics of programming, builds on the previous HTML coding and is freely available. Other chapters cover a brief history of computing, how data is represented in computers, the fundamentals of digital logic and the impact computers are having on society. A large number of images are used to reinforce the text, and exercises are embedded inside the chapters with another set at the end of the chapter.
If you are in the queue to teach an introduction to computer science course, then you should examine this book. It is well written and the level of presentation is appropriate for the typical student taking such a course. It could also be used for self-study.

I had to buy this book for class, and I've been trudging through the exercises for the last month. Reed does a good job of explaining things and starting with basics and then building on them. I don't ever stress about the exercises, because in general they are rather easy, though they do consistently take longer than I expect them to take. Good for learning HTML & Javascript basics.

This book was required for a college course. It is a great book to learn about Computer Science in general. The book focuses on the internet and creating basic Web-pages. You will learn how to work with JavaScript and HTML code. You gain the knowledge to generally understand how to possibly make a Forum website. The book stresses text/number input, manipulation of text/numbers, and then output of text/numbers in various ways. You will learn about the history of the internet, the difference between what the Internet is and the World Wide Web. Yes, there is a difference! The drawback to this book is that there are a lot of type-o's in the code examples. You will learn enough in the book to be able to proof read the example, but it may cause you some headaches.

This book has a well balanced approach to explaining the topic of computer science. The author covers the history of computer science along with real world applications. The book breaks down key computer science topics with good diagrams and easy to understand language in addressing issues like the internet, networking, the internal workings of computers, and application development. In addition, the book provides thought provoking questions and introduces example programs that help the reader solidify their understanding of the concepts. I recommend this book to anyone trying to grasp the world of computer science.

I was asked to grade students' homework based on Chapter 10 of this book. I found that this book contains a lot of mistakes and complicates the subject greatly. Moreover, some side-notes miss the right-most part of the text, i.e. you cannot read those side-notes without guessing what letters are missing.

For example, in the aforementioned Chapter 10, there is a diagram, which shows that public-key encryption involves the following: the sender first encrypts the message with private key, then with public key; the recipient first decrypts the message with private key, then with public key. This sounds quite complicated, and looks like they have tried to present encryption and signature-verification at the same time, but call it "public key encryption". Clearly, it should not have been this complicated, or at least it should have been called appropriately.

As one more example from Chapter 10: they say that for LANs Ethernet technology is used. They claim that this technology uses Ethernet bus, and when one computer sends a message to another computer, all computers receive the message and check the intended recipient of the message, and discard the messages that they are not intended to receive. (Clearly, this describes how Ethernet Hubs work, which can be found rarely these days as opposed to Fast Ethernet Switches.) However, later on they say that the speed of the aforementioned Ethernet is 10, 100, or 1000 Mbits per second. This is where the problem begins -- I have never saw a Gigabit Ethernet Hub (as opposed to Switch), and I don't think that Fast Ethernet Hubs were popular either. Clearly, this is one more instance of confusing the reader and presenting false information.

I would never recommend this book to anyone. If the author wanted to keep the subject simple, he should have avoided the technical details all together. If he wanted to present some technical detail, then he should have made sure that they don't contradict each other and are not missing important points and updates.

The book took a lot of time to come in, about two weeks, but it was almost new when it did come in, for a used book. I am a happy camper.