Customer Reviews

Oh! Pascal!/Book and Mac Disk

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This book is great in what it does: teach you the Pascal programming language.

The authors explain everything clearly and in a friendly language - it's actually FUN to read each chapter. The order in which all the concepts are introduced is just plain perfect.

I think this is the BEST Pascal-learning book ever written.

I have used this course to teach hundreds of students. Most have found it very helpful. As a professor, I found it to be a great tool. The book is intended for people who are going to become computer science majors, but has a sense of humor (unlike many "major-oriented" books). I would guess that reviews with fewer than three stars come from disgruntled students. (Not one of mine, of course :-)).

I learnt my Pascal programming skills by dutifully working through the chapters in my spare time. I haven't seen a better book for beginners - it is thorough but humorous. Many examples use numbers and mathematics, and a reader must be prepared to think about the material being presented. It does not give masses of code for you to copy and try out, but tries to develop an understanding of the Pascal language.

If you are a Pascal programmer, the most powerlful and easy to understand book you need is Oh! Pascal!. I have read a friend's Oh! Pascal!(Second Edition), and I was surprised of the easy-to-understand way Cooper wrote it. But now, with the Third Edition, I have learned everything I wanted about Pascal. Trust me, you will love Oh! Pascal! (third edition).

I used this book to teach myself the basics of Pascal before taking it as a college class. It had been recommended by programmer friends I'd known going back several years. I was delighted to find it was also used as the text for the programming class I took. Probably one of the best things the professor did was choose this text. It's not an easy book, it requires you to work *and* think about what you're learning, but it has served me well. I am not a professional programmer, tho I have worked among them, and the basic programming skills I learned from Oh! Pascal helped me speak their 'language' and understand what sort of work they were doing, and enabled me to 'translate' computerese to my other coworkers, that the programmers often didn't have the time (or inclination) to do. Again, worth the effort the book expects of it's user, not simply to learn to program pascal, but to learn to think, and understand the discipline of programming: two thumbs up.

This is the best programming book ever! Doug Cooper does a terrific job explaining the language and its nuances in a clear and understandable style. I have used it as an introductory to advanced programming text at the high school level. It's too bad that the language isn't as popular as it was back in the '80's.

I had the misfortune of taking a one semester Pascal class with this book as the main textbook, and it was awful, I only learned Mr. Cooper's sense of humor, but hardly anything about Pascal from it. I had to rely on the Instructor's years of experience teaching the language, and some other books, that concentrated more in teaching the language itself, rather than giving abstract examples and partially coded programs. I hope that in his new edition Mr. Cooper concentrates more in "Pascal"

The cover was the best part. I found this book difficult to use. In was my first programming class, I wasn't able to use the book as a reference or a learning object. I would pass on this book and use online documentation.

I used this book in a college Introduction to Computer Programming class and had to rely on an instructor who was a bad teacher. I ended up ailing the class because the book provided absolutly no assistance. In other words, if you're smart you won't rely on this book for an Introduction class, it won't help.