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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?

#22
post #9

There’s quite a few: - Zed Shaw’s Learn More Python the Hard Way[1] - Brian Hogan’s Exercises for Programmers (best for beginners or for learning a new language)[2] - Hal Fulton’s The Ruby Way[3] - Chris Ferdinandi’s Vanilla JS Academy[4] - Marc-Andre Cournoyer’s Great Code Club (it’s old, and the community doesn’t exist anymore, but i think he still maintains it)[5] - A few python books from No Starch Press (notably…

Is Shaw's first Python book any good?

I found his Learn Python3 The Hard Way to be a great series of exercises if you're starting out or starting again. You won't find -everything- on any topic, but the exercises are complete enough to get you rolling and seed the sort of patterns that will make you successful in looking for more material.

I had a little bit of Python(2) under my belt from general curiosity, and I've done some C++ in high school so I have some "CS Theory"

There is a "more" python version out now https://learncodethehardway.org/more-python-book/

Amazon ( the "newer" version proposed is not, it's his python2 book ) https://www.amazon.com/Learn-More-Python-Hard-Way/dp/0134123...

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

#24
post #9

There’s quite a few: - Zed Shaw’s Learn More Python the Hard Way[1] - Brian Hogan’s Exercises for Programmers (best for beginners or for learning a new language)[2] - Hal Fulton’s The Ruby Way[3] - Chris Ferdinandi’s Vanilla JS Academy[4] - Marc-Andre Cournoyer’s Great Code Club (it’s old, and the community doesn’t exist anymore, but i think he still maintains it)[5] - A few python books from No Starch Press (notably…

> and from reading open source code.

Do you just search for projects in the language your using on github?

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

#26

Not a book, but CS50x is a freely available course with high quality videos and lecture notes. The lecture exercises are programming projects of sorts. It teaches programming from scratch with C and then Python. Plus, since a lot of students take it, there are lots of online resources with tips, like the CS50 subreddit. https://cs50.harvard.edu/x/2023/

CS50x and CS50web are fantastic. web is a bit outdated but it doesn't matter because the projects are so good.

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

#27
When I was young, I went about it the opposite way. I thought of some small project and researched how to implement it, then moved on to something bigger. Everybody is different of course, but I felt like I learned more having to figure out how to go about implementing each myself.

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

#30
"Hands on Rust" teaches Rust by building a rogue like game step by step. Before that there's a chapter where you rebuild Flappy Bird from scratch that teaches the "basics" before diving into more advanced concepts in the rogue like. I liked the approach and recommend the book but it's fast paced and expects quite a bit from the reader (it's excellent if you have some programming experience already but probably daunting as a true first book imo).
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