Intro To Programming

Mark Guzdial guzdial at cc.gatech.edu
Wed Jun 23 14:30:29 UTC 1999


Thank you, Jen!  (You can stop by my office later for your pay-off :-)

While students did complain about the Purple Book a good bit, I haven't
given great weight to their complaints -- in part, because some students
are just complaining about having to expend extra effort; but also in part,
because there aren't alot of good alternatives.  The main complaints, and
my explanations, were:

- "I can't find what I want in this book! I want a reference book, or an
API."  The Purple book is much more a description with lots of examples
than the kinds of reference books the students are used to with C++ and
Java.  On the other hand, the Purple book is in the same style
(topically-based, discussion-oriented) as other great CS books, like
"Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs."  It means that it's
harder to read than a reference book, but if you can wade through it,
you'll get alot out of it.

- "I want to see a paragraph that says 'X works like this' and not all
these examples."  The Purple book emphasizes examples that you can type in
yourself and explore, rather than lots of detailed definitions.  Students
aren't used to a book that you read while sitting at a keyboard (as opposed
to a reference book that you glance at while sitting at a keyboard).

- "There's nothing in the book at all about Y" to which I would respond
with the page numbers where Y could be found.  The index and table of
contents don't really work for novice students, or worse, students who know
alot about things other than Smalltalk.  For example, students will want to
generate a random number.  They'll look around, and not find, rnd().  They
look up random in the index, and find Random, which is a Stream (they want
a function that returns between 0.0 and 1.0, like they've always used in
the past).  Random is documented in the "Numerical Classes" chapter, three
chapters before "Protocol for Streams," so understanding Random involves
lots of flipping between chapters.  If they push further and find the
"Probability Distributions" chapter, they become pretty darn lost.

Mark


>--------------------
>Jen a.k.a. Smilie
>:-P
>smilie at cc.gatech.edu
>
>
>On Tue, 22 Jun 1999, David Mitchell wrote:
>
>> Smalltalk 80 The Language -- (The purple book is more than adequate for an
>> intro, and the blue portions are now on the Web). This is still one of my
>> favorites. Again, not really the best for bootstrapping from no programming
>
>
>I personally didn't not find that book to be very useful.  It was the book
>that we had to use for one of my classes.  (I'm a student at GA Tech.)  To
>me it seemed to be talking way over my head, and I had a few cs classes
>before that one.  The only chapters that I found useful were the
>simulation chapters, and this is because we had to do a business
>simulation as one of the assignments.
>
>Although, I was lucky, I had a great professor who was a really good
>teacher (hi, Mark :-).  I thought he made up for all of the book's
>lacking.  Also, the book he is currently working on seemed to be more down
>to earth.  It spoke to me on a level that I thought made it easier for me
>to grasp the concepts and not get lost in all of the jargion.  Basically,
>I think when his book comes out, it will be a great help.
>
>Jen


--------------------------
Mark Guzdial : Georgia Tech : College of Computing : Atlanta, GA 30332-0280
(404) 894-5618 : Fax (404) 894-0673 : guzdial at cc.gatech.edu
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/people/Faculty/Mark.Guzdial.html





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