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Ask HN: Books that teach programming by building a series of small projects?

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Re: Ask HN: Books that teach programming by building a series of small projects?

#201

Post by kirso »

I failed to learn for the past 10 years and I am complicit. But partially as a self-taught, you have no clue which resources are good and which are not.

Recently all mainstream "learn to code" sources realised just making you memorise concepts doesn't work and started changing curriculum, but before that happens...

The best 2 resources I found are: - https://learnprogramming.online/ - https://scrimba.com

Both are project driven and won't hand-hold you if you want to continue, you need to proceed based on a mastery learning method.

Re: Ask HN: Books that teach programming by building a series of small projects?

#202

Post by kirso »

patchorang wrote: post #57

Not a book and webdev focused, but I've been doing https://fullstackopen.com/en/ and it's been great. The chapters are structured so you are building 2 projects at once. One where you follow along with the chapter material with example code and explanations. And a second in the exercises. I really like it because it introduces the concepts in the context of a project, but you can't get stuck because the code is there…

Its a great resource, but not for total beginners, however if you know basics of html, css and javascript this is hands-down one of the best resources out there.

Re: Ask HN: Books that teach programming by building a series of small projects?

#203

Post by garfieldnate »

ojl wrote: post #159

I mentioned The Ray Tracer Challenge in a comment below, and it seems quite popular so I’ll submit it here as well. http://raytracerchallenge.com/ It’s not really for beginners though, but maybe possible to start it together with a beginners book in a language of choice. It starts with points, vectors and matrixes, but gets more advanced later on. It’s around 250 pages and there’s basically no code provided, just tes…

This is my favorite programming book. It provides the test cases for the whole ray tracer, and making them pass was really addictive. I was obsessed with it for the month or so it took to finish.

He's also written another book on mazes, but I haven't had the chance to read it. I wish there were a similar book on 2D graphics, which are plenty complex themselves.

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