|
Beginning Programming for Dummies
 |
Author: Wallace Wang
List Price: $24.99
Our Price: Click to see the latest and low price
ISBN: 0764508350
Publisher: For Dummies (15 March, 2001)
Edition: Paperback
Sales Rank: 26,039
Average Customer Rating: 3.7 out of 5
|
Customer ReviewsRating: 4 out of 5
Great for program structure -Very Helpful
I have to agree with the prior reviewers exhaustion at the pedestrian political commentary included in the text. But unlike that prior reviewer, I will extol the value to be had here in this book. I approached as a tool to understand the basics of how the various parts of a program are constructed. The book focuses on Qbasic with passing references to C++ (my ultimate goal is to use C++) and Java. Since I plan to progress rapidly to this other language I did not run afoul of the errors reported by the other reviewers because I did not input them.I feel that I have more than adequately met my goal of learning about the "nuts and bolts" of a computer program. There is adequate depth about functions, subroutines, variables and arrays to start you on your way. There are also many tips and danger areas highlighted for the budding programmer. I don't feel that this book is lacking with regard to the structure of programming, and I will not rate this lower because of the coding errors others have reported, but I can not give this a higher ranking because of the inane attempts at humor. Mr. Wang, a comedian you are not, keep to your day job.
Rating: 2 out of 5
Lame Political slant, syntax errors but decent otherwise
I quickly tired of the authors extreme left political statements. Programming and technology should be free from politics but WANG uses almost every opportunity in his code examples to make some comment against politicans, conservatives, lawyers, wealthy people etc. Perhaps this is why there are so many syntax errors in the sample code. Keep your feelings and agenda to yourself.Another thing that kind of got on my nerves is everytime a new concept is introduced, we scrap the previous code example and start over. I like books where we keep building on the same program, adding new buttons / menus and stuff. This way we dont start over every other page and we learn how different code and objects work together. When I tried to use Libery Basic under XP and it didnt work, I downloaded the latest version from Liberty's website. While poking around in LB v4 I saw that they have some 6+ extensive tutorials included with the demo version. I almost feel like i could have gone through these LB tutorials and learned just as much and save the $25 I spent on this book. This book is decent and I dont regret buying it but I can only give it 2 stars.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Excellent for Beginner
This is the book that I first learned computer programming off of. I always wanted to know how people made games so I asked my mom, who works with computers. She said people wrote software. I said I wanted to learn how to write software and she took me to the book store and "Beginning Programming For Dummies" is what we bought. This book laid down an excellent foundation for the skills I developed in the future. Some people didn't like it, some did. Every book is going to have some errors in it somewhere; humans aren't perfect. The things I like about this book is that it stresses clean structure of code, something VERY important when it comes to programming. It also stresses more on concepts rather than technical details with the programming language, which is more important. Even though this book uses Liberty Basic, all of the concepts taught are useful with all other programming languages, even C, C++, and assembly. You can't go wrong with this book.
Similar Products
· C++ for Dummies (4th Edition, Completely Revised)
· How Computer Programming Works :
· Sams Teach Yourself Beginning Programming in 24 Hours
· Absolute Beginner's Guide to Programming, Third Edition
· Complete Idiot's Guide to a Career in Computer Programming
|
