Reviews (8)

Former Student Speaks
As a former student of Dr. Shackelford when I was an undergrad at Tech, I have first hand knowledge of trying to learn programming with psudeo code as my basis.While proponents of psuedo code claim that it allows learning the basics without getting bogged down in the mechanics of programming, there isn't a whole lot you can actually do with the knowledge gained from this book.You may understand programming better after learning this material, however you will never be able to program an actual computer to do anything.As an engineer who leans towards the hardware side but would like to have more practical programming skills, I would have appreciated learning more of the practical implementation with the material in this book.Personally the formula that has worked for me is to learn the theory, then implement that knowledge by creating something in the real world with real tools.While this book may help you with the theory, the practical implementation side must be found elsewhere.Hence two stars; this book is half the story.

If you are looking for a book that goes over the basics of programming and you don't care about any practical applications, this is the book for you.If you are looking for real world programming skills, look elsewhere.This book will not teach you how to program with real world tools.

Not a teacher, or even a college student
I've been a professional computer programmer for the last seven years, with no formal training.I bought this book to begin improving my grasp of computer theory as well as practice.I've found this book to be eminantly readable, an actual page turner.Parts of it are quite elementary, but it's very good at explaining "why" as well as "what".

I consider the pseudo-code an advantage, since it forces me to look at unfamiliar terms and structures and equate them with the equivalent items in my "real" language.It teaches *theory*, which I can apply to any language, not implementation in a single language that will be obsolete in a year or two.

Mr. Black is misdirected on the point of the book
If the title of this book was "Introduction to Programming", then I would wholeheartedly agree with Mr. Black below.Indeed, Dr. Shackelford does not teach programming in his book.Rather, he presents algorithms in a general sense, and algorithmic thought over programming practice is presented to the novice.

An adequate programming foundation begins with the trials and errors of learning one's first programming knowledge.Dr. Shackelford's book better preparesone for their first programming language experience, but is by no means a substitute for a programming language course if one's goal is to learn to program.

There are many that wish to gain a better knowledge of computing from a higher-level, theoretical standpoint.Also as an upper-level computer science theory TA at Georgia Tech, I realize the importance of being introduced to a concept in its high-level foundations, rather than in its gory details.

The CS curriculum at Tech is moving to Scheme as an introduction to computing and computer science.While I adamantly feel this is an excellent move on the part of the College of Computing, given their goal to output programmers from the school, I also feel some generalized theoretical foundations are lacking from the course that were present when it was taught with Dr. Shackelford's book.

Reviews (30)

Two great books
I have read and worked through both of Eric Roberts books on C.
Of all the programming books I have read, and there are many, his two are the best.

My only regret is that he has not written books on C++.

The Art and Science of C
I thought this was a wonderful beginners book. It gave me the basics and then allowed me to go on and try new things by myself. By the end I really felt like I could write my own programs in C.

I only gave it four stars because I am a harsh grader and its a textbook, so you can't give it five.

The Art and Science of C
I borrowed this book from library and believed I had made a right decision.

Quoted from the book, Mr. Roberts have been teaching computer science for over 20 years, I'm not sure how long he has taught C language but I suppose this book is written in a way that he believes is most beneficial to the readers, based on his teaching experience.

C is a cryptic and complex language, so the author teaches in a stepwise manner, he hides the complexity by introducing his private libraries and data abstractions. So the readers implement the functionality of C, which is independent from the complexity of C; once the readers have enough grasp at C, they may move on to explore the complexity of C.

The author have done these with good intention because data types in ANSI C are limited in size, for example, the data type int is different from our perception of integer indaily life. The address operator & may be confusing as well.

How did I use the book? I rewrited all the examples presented in book without his private libaries. I did the exercises in the book without his private libraries as well. Instead of copying all his codes and getting them work, I tried to make errors: for example, in the simple hello world program, omitted the preprocessor operator #, then read the error messages. I also tried to improve the efficiency of my algorithm.

Reviews (30)

Great start for Java programmers
I bought this book a couple of months ago and was on and off studying Java on my own, but I must say, overall its an excellent book if you are a novice to object oriented progamming. Just pratice making some of the programs that the book offers as problems and you should be fine. Like anything, if you don't make an effort to understand whats in the book and pratice the problems given, its useless.

A Good introduction to programming & Java
I found this book pretty neat if one wants to develop an object oriented approach to programming .Though java is not covered exhaustively, but it does give the beginner a feel of how java works.I had a teacher to go along with this book & that too helped to get the maximum from the book

Reviews (32)

Good book IF you know how to use it.
This is a solid math book that covers every topic you'll need to know in the area. Make no mistake this is not a kid's book, and one must know how to study and read math in order to utilize it to the full potential. Many people that rate math books poorly do so because they have not developed adequate skills in studying math. If you take your time, work out the examples with the book, read and read again all of the concepts are about as clear as they can come from a math book. Most teachers/professors prefer to use their own examples, because that's how they abstract the problem in their own mind. It's easier to create a problem, than sit down and observe a premade example. Aside from some slightly screwy lesson organization it is a solid book. If you have patience, and try to do more than briefly skim over a lesson to understand it this book will be more than adequate for the topic.

Awful, even the prof said so
This book is horrible. I am a graduate software engineering student and took this course at a local university. The prof said that the book is horrible and used his own exaplainations and skipped the books explainations. If I was forced to use the book's explaination and examples I would be S.O.L. The only reason every discrete class uses this book is because there are no other discrete books in competition. If you are a comp sci student they should break discrete math classes apart to discrete for comp sci and discrete from math majors. They should also have comp sci teachers teaching this because math teachers don't usually have a clue how to relate discrete math to computer science.

Reviews (69)

Just plain confusing...
This book is pretty useless when it comes to explaining concepts that it attempts to teach. It skips steps and fails to explain how to solve a lot of problems. I usually have to have a math tutor, or the teacher explain the lessons to me, because the 15-page sectionsin the book seem to get me nowhere. I wouldn't have a problem with discrete math if we had a different textbook.

Reasonably good text, very poor student/instructor guides.
The text itself is brief, but still a good overview of discrete mathematics.The main problem is the student and instructor guides.The answers frequently have errors and problems are not reiterated in the text, so a student or a grader has to flip back and forth between at least two books to make sense of the solutions.Even more frustrating for students is the fact that some problems do not have good answers: the author admits that he cannot solve the problem and refers to answers from other problems instead.This is simply not fair to students who may be struggling with the material.

As a teaching assistant, it is not up to me to select the text books.If it were, I would look for a replacement.