11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Doesn't quite hit the spot, August 15, 2004
This review is from: Learn How to Program Using Any Web Browser (Paperback)
Harold Davis has started with a marvelous idea, teaching programming using a language available on all platforms, JavaScript, and an interface familiar to everyone, the web browser. Learn How to Program Using Any Web Browser is written for absolute beginners to learn the basic principles of programming -- or at least that's what the cover would have you believe.
The language is suitably light and simple, the book well-structured and broken down into easily digested chunks. The order in which concepts are introduced is fairly traditional for a language tutorial: first we get types, variables and statements, before moving on to conditionals, loops, and functions, followed by arrays and objects before finishing with event-driven programming. Davis' decision to leave string handling till last seems a little perverse and personally I would have introduced functions earlier.
My real complaints about this book centre on the abstract nature of the discussion. There are very few real world examples that could be useful to anyone. The best you get is a version of "Rock, Paper, Scissors" in Chapter 3, and an 'auction' application. The book would have been improved dramatically if the end result of your study was a few things you could actually point to.
I also have a complaint about the target audience for this book. The web page for the book at the publishers states that "The target reader is likely a twelve- or thirteen-year-old, who is just starting to get curious about what makes a computer work -- or an office worker who has been using computer applications for years, and would like to spend some time delving deeper into what makes them tick." Most adults and even teenagers don't want to 'learn how to program' as much as they want to learn how to use a tool to perform a task. If your tool is JavaScript, then it's almost certain your task is related to building web pages, but this gets little real attention from Davis. For even younger students, this book totally lacks anything to hold their attention -- the lack of real-world examples hurts here.
I also take issue with the title: this book doesn't really teach 'programming' much at all. It certainly teaches you to write JavaScript, but where are the sections about the real lessons of programming, such as top-down vs. bottom-up design, or breaking a task up into chunks? Even debugging has little coverage -- a single thirty-page chapter, half of which is specific to JavaScript or the throwing and handling of exceptions. Since the work of Papert and others at MIT twenty-five years ago, we've learned a great deal about how to teach programming concepts in a simple manner, but Davis appears to have ignored all this and given us a language tutorial. The publisher's web page for the book says "very emphatically, this is not a book about programming JavaScript." If that's so then I'd argue that it isn't a book about learning the principles of programming either.
It is obvious from this book that Davis is an excellent writer; if he had tried to write a book to teach JavaScript and had focused on the tasks for which it is often used this, volume may have been superb. As it is, he has shot for a higher goal and fallen far too short.
If you would like to check it out for yourself, you can go to the web page for the book where there is sample chapter, the Table of Contents (though they call it a "Detailed TOC" as distinct from the 'Table of Contents,' which is just a list of 11 chapter titles) and index, all in PDF format.
I went looking for a book that I could give to my 11-year-old daughter now that she has become interested in "what Daddy does." I'm still looking, I'm certain that this one isn't it.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
learn procedural and declarative languages, February 26, 2005
This review is from: Learn How to Program Using Any Web Browser (Paperback)
Davis has chosen a novel approach to teaching programming to a novice. This book merely assumes that you have access to a browser on your computer. It doesn't even need Internet access, though that doesn't hurt. Davis shows how by editing simple text files, you can cobble together HTML pages and JavaScript code within those pages. You are taught JavaScript. It has many of the features of any langugage. Conditional expressions, loops, etc.
He has produced a nice, minimalist approach. An experienced programmer might quibble about the limitations of JavaScript. But what the heck. If you are new at programming, you'll easily learn all the key ideas here. Plus, you'll pick up some useful knowledge of HTML along the way. Given the ubiquity of the Web, knowing both HTML and JavaScript can be quite useful, jobwise.
Also, you can compare the differences in coding HTML and JavaScript. The former is declarative, the latter procedural. Davis doesn't seem to go into this, but his approach lets you learn both styles.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This book delivers what it claims, July 21, 2004
This review is from: Learn How to Program Using Any Web Browser (Paperback)
If you have no programming experience then this book gets your started right away using simple tools right on your computer. Easy-to-follow examples, quick and easy to read. I'd highly recommend to anyone, especially those who are new to programming. Not condescending like the for dummies books. Each lesson builds on itself and author introduces new topics gradually and gracefully. All code available on publishers website so you don't have to type if you don't want to. EXCELLENT!
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