Absolute Beginners' Guide to Programming
Author: Greg Perry
Soft cover: 416 pages
Publisher: Que (November 20, 2002)
ISBN: 0-7897-2905-9

This book is highly recommended for those with absolutely no programming experience, and who would like to become familiar with programming.

In part one, "Prelude to Programming", the author explains Hardware, Software, Data, Procedures, and People interacting with computers. He also gives insight into the history of computers, Mainframes, Minicomputers, and Microcomputers. Finally, the author explains the anatomy of a program.

A discussion around the evolution of programming languages follows in "Fundamentals of Programming", and starts where programs were physically wired by experts to generate and process data. You get an overview of FORTRAN, COBOL, and eventually C, C++, Basics, Hypertext, and Scripting languages, and Visual Basic.

"Hands-on Programming" is all about Visual Basic. In the next 130 pages you will be exposed to the Visual Basic language.

Program Algorithms, Programming with C and C++, Scripting Languages, Internet programming concepts, HTML and Java Programming, and JavaScript are the interesting topics you will learn more about in part four, "Programming in Various Environments".

The last part of the book, "Business of Programming" concludes with the importance of maintenance, distributing applications, the programming business, and finally discusses the reader's programming future. It provides hints to the reader of how to stay ahead with technology.

What makes this book of even more value to read, are the three different icons that indicate notes, tips, and warnings. The Notes icon brings a particular topic to your attention while the Tips icon gives you insight into a certain topic, and provides an immediate way of doing something. The Caution icon focuses your attention on problems and side effects that can occur in a specific situation.

The following people will benefit from this book: (Refer to Introduction p1)

• Individuals with no programming experience but who want an introduction to it.
• Companies that want to train non-programming computer users for programming careers.
• Schools that want to promote good coding design and style, and that want to offer an overview of the life of a programmer, both for introductory language classes, and for systems analysis and design classes.

So, if you are someone that is interested in the world of programming and don't know where to start, this book will introduce you to all its facets.

Corné Kruger