Customer Reviews

An Introduction to Programming Using Alice

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3 star:		(3)
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For non-programmers who want to learn an object oriented language, Alice is a nice choice. At least as a pedagogic vehicle. As far as I know, there are no actual [or few] actual jobs for Alice programmers. But at the primary or secondary school level, Alice gets the main concepts common to many commercial OO languages across to students.

Herbert introduces these concepts at a deliberately slow pace. Suitable for most of the targeted audience. The screen captures of the user interface are quite pretty, and help to hold the reader's attention. As compared with learning C++, say, where there is no intrinsic GUI. Plus, the mapping of conceptual objects to graphical objects in Alice is its main attraction. Very intuitive.

In my opinion, there is no better way to introduce young people to programming than with Alice. As a programming language, it combines the advantages of a visual developmental environment, a largely natural language command structure and the component-like nature of object-oriented programming. However, even the most intuitive of development environments is not completely self-evident, especially for students receiving their first exposure to programming. No matter how it is presented, programming is still an abstract, mental process.
Therefore, if the beginner is to be successful, the approach must be one of simple recipes, at least at the start. In comparison to other books, specifically "Alice 2.0: Introductory Concepts and Techniques", by Shelly, Cashman and Herbert, this one fails to be simple enough for most beginners. The instruction is largely textual in nature, which will be adequate for students with more experience with computers and programming. The breadth of coverage is also suitable only for a short course; it is impossible to present a thorough introduction to any programming language in 243 pages, especially when the pages are approximately 7" by 9".
If I were to ever be in the position to offer a course in programming with Alice, this is not a book that I would use as the text.

This is the book we are using for an introductory course of programming and logic. I love Alice and learning about the program, but this book is way too complicated for the beginner.

This is the same book that we are required to use for our college class. So far from what I have seen, I think this is going to be fun. Alice is an intro to programming to give beginners a more basic idea of how programming works, and keeping it fun. There is a CD with that has student files and Alice to download. To me it is a great book.

I can not yet comment on the content of the book but I was under the impression that it was platform independent. No-wear in the book itself does it mention any requirements to run Alice and do the tutorials. You have to go to the Alice [...] website to find this out. Though the concepts do apply cross platform it would have been simple to add this little detail to the introduction.

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Brought for my son. Very good condition. Very quick delivery. Would buy from seller again.

Not only did I save money from buying from Amazon, it also arrived in time for my first class. Excellenct service.