Customer Reviews

You Can Do It!: A Beginners Introduction to Computer Programming

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

 

 

I bought this book for my niece. Guide her through it and she is having lots of fun.

This book assume nothing from its user. As long as you are comfortable in using the keyboard and mouse, sufting the net and emailing, you have more than sufficient technical computer skills to learn from this book :)

This book avoid the the pitfall of so many other introductory books for novice. It avoid the nitty bitty parts of programming at the beginning. Instead Glassborow concentrate on letting you learn and use the more advanced and actually easier feature of C++ on the word go.

The book first guide you through the installation of the contents in the cd, which basically provide the novice with a nice and easy IDE and customised class and templates. From then he introduce the basic of C++, incorporating features and function of standard C++ library without referring to arcane topic such as pointers, etc. Novice also will learn the use of template and class, without first having to learn how to create one, which to me is a more natural way of learning. If you want to teach someone how to drive, teach them how to engage gear and step on the accelarator, not explaining the working of the engine and transmission.

The examples used are interesting. If you work through all the examples, at the end of the book you could actually do some simple computer graphic using C++. My niece stay motivated throughout the whole book, and she have a good learning experience. And I think that is the most important part. Programming is a hard enough endeavour, and having a book that you can enjoy is really a big help.

Overall, a great book for total novice. You learn the basic of programming and C++, and have fun along the way. Glassborow also use good and up to date coding style that comply with standard (well, as far as I can see, since I'm at best intermediate level at the time of writing this :)

I thought the autor was good at being informative and not overlooking anything for absolute beginners.

Although it was informative, I don't think it was informative enough. The author could have written a good bit more detail into the book and given the reader a wider view of the C++ language. If you are considering buying this book, you should probably look somewhere else unless you have extremely little free time on your hands and want to take "smaller than normal" steps to becoming an advanced computer programmer.

Other than that, the author wrote this book well and didn't make any noticeable errors(he had one or two "small" errors in some of the examples that could throw you off a little bit if you copy them and dont't look through them to see if everything is correct and how it makes sense).

It is a fairly good book however in some parts i got lost in.Especially chapter 3, for example page 43... "create another C++ source code file and call it test_drawing_functions.cpp. Type in the source code that I porvided above for main(). What main()code? There is no code right above with that code and not even in the previous page... This made the entire chapter a blure to me and i still did not get a single code right in that chapter. This author really wants you to remeber everything in the first 2 chapters (i.e - The beginning part of each source code and definitions.)

This is another book in the spirit of "Who is afraid of C++" that came out a while back and also tried to teach a complete novice C++ via a correspondence between the book author and someone completely new to programming.
From what I"ve read it's alot more accurate than the former since this book author is on the C++ standards committee so I noted few errors.
I really enjoyed the questions the novice asked at the end of the chapters since they were the same questions that I asked myself when first learning C++ and some of them are quite funny now that I have more C++ knowledge.
If you are a total novice though this book can get rough at times since the author covers quite a bit of material in each chapter. It' probably take two readings from someone totally new to programming to get the most of it.
Especially, around chapter 4 the book gets exponentially difficult and I suppose most reader's unless they had prior C++ experience or a mentor would give up at this point. The author didn't help things any by refusing to provide the sourcecode for the chapter programs on the cd since he feels you should type them all up yourself to learn.
So, the other thing I really found issue with and the reason I'm knocking off 1 star is for the inclusion of a library that is closely tied to the IDE that is used throughout the book to provide graphics support and to make the programs more interesting. First off all the directions on setting it up are quite poor and if you want to use another IDE to run the programs you need to mess with the library sourcecode as I did to get it to work which would be quite a difficult task for a beginner!
So Mac and Linux user's are left out in the cold since the author only provides support for Windows users so that may be a dealbreaker for some.
But if you want to learn C++ the way it's supposed to be used and correctly this book will get you started.
Finally, if you are able to tough it out to the end of the book you will have built quite a few cool graphic programs including a LOGO turtle emulator.
Since the author did not provide a version of playpen for macosx or visual studio(probably most popular ide for windows) I went ahead and did it. I have the instructions posted here for anyone else interested in using this book here:

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i found this book extreamly easy to use and to learn with even though every one says dont learn to program by starting with c++ i found it easy enough to learn it also comes with all the tools u need to start programming except a computer of course. one of my favorite things is the comments from the assistant author. it showed that anybody can really program if you have never programmed a computer at all this is a good place to start. The book only expects that u can read and no how to turn on a computer. if you can do those to things u can use the book

The Kindle Edition was a waste of my time. You can't learn unless you follow along with the exercises and the eBook doesn't come with the CD (I didn't expect it to). What I did expect was better instructions on the author's website for getting the CD contents and what I got was a broken link for one of the critical components - Quincy 2002. I worked for a few hours, Googling and trying to set up the development environment. Also, I couldn't find the mingn download - download is broken on mingn.org. I tried getting it other places, but I'm not sure I got the right thing.

I tried the first exercise, which calls for Quincy 2002, which is no longer available. I did get Quincy 2005, but I couldn't compile or run the program. Frustrating. The step by step instructions in the book are not detailed. Granted, I feel for the author, because the book is five years old and it's hard to maintain links. Note to the author: I suggest buying some hosting so that you can provide the downloads. Your book costs a lot as a Kindle edition and this should pay for the hosting. You should keep your website up-to-date. Also, I think that step by step video instruction, similar to Lynda.com, would be great for this. Perhaps you should make a YouTube series, and if nothing else, a video on how to setup the development environment and get through the first few exercises. If you don't do any of this, I think you should pull your book from the Kindle store, least you get more negative reviews and waste other people's time. Otherwise, based on the other reviews, it seems like the printed edition would be good.

I don't agree that C++ is best language for learning to program. Scheme or Python are great for teaching the concepts, as they teach at many universities, before progressing to C++. For now, I'm watching the video podcast on iTunesU, Introduction to Computer Science and Programming, put out by MIT (its' free). They teach using Python.

In my experience, the hallmark of a true master of a field is his or her ability to write clear and concise introductions to the field in question, aimed at trainees and novices. What C++ is concerned, this text is a true masterpiece as it presents the core concepts clearly and concisely in a way that the novice has a chance to master.

One ingenious aspect which sets this book apart from the oters, is that the enclosed CD contains everything the novice needs to get started, including a C++ compiler and IDE. The author also includes a simple graphics package, which allows the student to start out programming graphics applications from day 1. This visual approach lets the student actually see the effects of the programs, as opposed to the more traditional approach to teaching C++, where operations on, say, text strings are more abstract. By starting out with visual programming, Glassborow postpones one major obstacle - problem abstraction - which might obfuscate the early learning process for the novice programmer.

While problem abstraction is a major part of computer programming, just achieving a rudimentary mastering of C++ requires an intense learning effort. This text's focus on visual applications is a major step to focus the early learning efforts to where they are needed: Learning how to handle the IDE and how to get to grips with basic C++.

This book seemed to start out rather well, but the further I got into it the more obvious it became that it was rushed. Some issues are minor draft errors like "above" rather then "before" or "earlier", but others are more severe. Errors like exercises descriptions so vague they can't even be completed, practice exercises and chapter material based upon C++ features that haven't been covered at all (or in nearly enough detail) to be completed, and syntax errors in the book's examples that keep programs from compiling are major roadblocks for an inexperienced programmer. Even already having some prior experience with C, I found myself having difficultly getting through this book. The problems aren't too bad in the earlier chapters, but they become more and more prevalent as the book progresses.

Overall I'd say it's a descent choice for those with some prior C++ experience looking for review, but for those with little or no programming experience at all, I'd strongly recommend avoiding this book.

Book - 5 stars.
Software (Quincy IDE + graphics programming library) - 1 star.

Although book itself is very good, I would never ever use C++ to teach computer programming to beginners (language is too complicated, it is really hard to figure out what is wrong once you made a mistake etc.)

They would be much better off using Python, Java or practically any other language (especially one with decent free IDE).

This book offers a great introduction to various kinds of computer programming. It is very easy to understand and the CD that comes with it provides hours of entertainment. It has helped me understand the software I own better and appreciate the hardwork that goes into programming. I am even considering taking courses in programming!