Draft Notice

This book is a draft that has been released for evaluation and comment. Some of the later chapters are included as placeholders and indicators for the intended scope of the final draft, but are intentionally left blank. The author encourages people to send feedback including suggestions, corrections, and reviews to inform and influence the final draft. Thank you in advance to anyone helping out or sending constructive criticisms.

More Resources

Dr. Chris Bourke's webpage in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

From the Preface

Dr. Chris Bourke wrote:Several years ago our department revamped our introductory courses in a “Renaissance in Computing” initiative in which we redeveloped several different “flavors” of Computer Science I (one intended for Computer Science majors, one for Computer Engineering majors, one for non-CE engineering majors, one for humanities majors, etc.). The courses are intended to be equivalent in content but have a broader appeal to those in different disciplines. The intent was to provide multiple entry points into Computer Science. Once a student had a solid foundation, they could continue into Computer Science II and pick up a second programming language with little difficulty.

This basic idea informed how I structured this book. There is a separation of concepts and programming language syntax. The first part of this book uses pseudocode with a minimum of language-specific elements. Subsequent parts of the book recapitulate these concepts but in the context of a specific programming language. This allows for a “plug-in” style approach to Computer Science: the same book could theoretically be used for multiple courses or the book could be extended by adding another part for a new language with minimal effort.