Why I wrote this book
This is the fifth edition of a book I started writing in 1999, when I was teaching at Colby College. I had taught an introductory computer science class using the Java programming language, but I had not found a textbook I was happy with. For one thing, they were all too big! There was no way my students would read 800 pages of dense, technical material, even if I wanted them to. And I didn’t want them to. Most of the material was too specific—details about Java and its libraries that would be obsolete by the end of the semester, and that obscured the material I really wanted to get to.
The other problem I found was that the introduction to object-oriented programming was too abrupt. Many students who were otherwise doing well just hit a wall when we got to objects, whether we did it at the beginning, middle or end.
So I started writing. I wrote a chapter a day for 13 days, and on the 14th day I edited. Then I sent it to be photocopied and bound. When I handed it out on the first day of class, I told the students that they would be expected to read one chapter a week. In other words, they would read it seven times slower than I wrote it.
The philosophy behind it
Here are some of the ideas that make the book the way it is:
- Vocabulary is important. Students need to be able to talk about programs and understand what I am saying. I try to introduce the minimum number of terms, to define them carefully when they are first used, and to organize them in glossaries at the end of each chapter. In my class, I include vocabulary questions on quizzes and exams, and require students to use appropriate terms in short-answer responses.
- To write a program, students have to understand the algorithm, know the programming language, and they have to be able to debug. I think too many books neglect debugging. This book includes an appendix on debugging and an appendix on program development (which can help avoid debugging). I recommend that students read this material early and come back to it often.
- Some concepts take time to sink in. Some of the more difficult ideas in the book, like recursion, appear several times. By coming back to these ideas, I am trying to give students a chance to review and reinforce or, if they missed it the first time, a chance to catch up.
- I try to use the minimum amount of Java to get the maximum amount of programming power. The purpose of this book is to teach programming and some introductory ideas from computer science, not Java. I left out some language features, like the switch statement, that are unnecessary, and avoided most of the libraries, especially the ones like the AWT that have been changing quickly or are likely to be replaced.
The minimalism of my approach has some advantages. Each chapter is about ten pages, not including the exercises. In my classes I ask students to read each chapter before we discuss it, and I have found that they will do that and their comprehension is good. Their preparation makes class time available for a discussion of the more abstract material, in-class exercises, and additional topics that aren’t in the book.
But minimalism has some disadvantages. There is not much here that is intrinsically fun. Most of my examples demonstrate the most basic use of a language feature, and many of the exercises involve string manipulation and mathematical ideas. I think some of them are fun, but many of the things that excite students about computer science, like graphics, sound and network applications, are given short shrift.
The problem is that many of the more exciting features involve lots of details and not much concept. Pedagogically, that means a lot of effort for not much payoff. So there is a tradeoff between the material that students enjoy and the material that is most intellectually rich. I leave it to individual teachers to find the balance that is best for their classes. To help, the book includes appendices that cover graphics, keyboard input and file input.
One of my students wanted a suggestion for a Java book. I Googled and found some. When I saw this book, I thought it may be a good one to start with. I like Allen’s books. There are three reasons I like Allen’s books.
- The chapters are small and easy to read. For a beginning programmer, they are not very intimidating.
- Allen’s Python book had a creative common’s license, and I noticed that a few authors have taken his material and reused parts of it and came up with new books.
- The most important reason is this philosophy behind the book (and also why I copied the entire section in this post).
From a few experiments I have conducted so far, I found that the first challenge in teaching computer programming to students is to make it interesting. Once students are interested and feel confident, they can create simple programs with reasonable effort, they tend to explore more. Many programming books, however start out with too much detail. If you can teach the basic concepts in a few sessions and get them to code, you have won half the battle.