The famous Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP) does this, in the Scheme language. The whole book is online here, with the table of contents right at the front: https://web.mit.edu/6.001/6.037/sicp.pdf
There’s a JS edition too
Ask HN: Books that teach programming by building a series of small projects?
61–70 of 204 posts
Re: Ask HN: Books that teach programming by building a series of small projects?
#62"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 daunti…
I second this one. This was a great book. There are some follow ups to the final project I like Compile to WASM so you can run on the web: https://hands-on-rust.com/2021/11/06/run-your-rust-games-in-... > Port to the Bevy ECS: https://saveriomiroddi.github.io/learn_bevy_ecs_by_ripping_o... >
Oh cool I wasn't aware of these. Thanks for sharing, both look very interesting. I like the idea of reusing projects to teach different tech :)
Re: Ask HN: Books that teach programming by building a series of small projects?
#63If they don't exist, this is a good idea for anybody looking for a project to write a programming book
There are many, but the field is still wide open. Anyone with a particular domain experience should find a market.
There are lots of starting from scratch guides, and few focused guides.
for subject in ["Finance", "Contact Management", "Service Desk Automation", "Web Apps from scratch", "Web Apps on someone else's API", "Baseball Metrics"]: for language in ["R", "Go", "Python3", "Rust", "Lisp"]: print(f"Examples for {subject} in {language} would make a good book.")
edit: no idea how to smash indent-formatting into MD-for-HN
Re: Ask HN: Books that teach programming by building a series of small projects?
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is Shaw's first Python book any good?
Shaw has had some strong opinions that have gone significantly against the mainstream viewpoint in Python. Whether he's right or not doesn't really matter - as an educator that is targeting the mainstream it's fairly important to stay on that and not introduce personal bias around these things. Unfortunately his criticism was often not very constructive.
despite my other comment here I do agree with you on this, especially remembering his comments on test tools, nose for example
Re: Ask HN: Books that teach programming by building a series of small projects?
#65Re: Ask HN: Books that teach programming by building a series of small projects?
#66For Swift: https://www.apple.com/swift/playgrounds/ (I've had more success introducing programming with this than with any of the links below; it's a very compelling intro for those who already own an iPad/Mac, and the core concepts are generalisable to other languages/environments even if it's specific to Apple's APIs and hardware.) ~~~ For Python: https://automatetheboringstuff.com https://nostarch.com/big-book-sma…
I second eloquent JavaScript. Been doing this book since v1 and recommend to just about anyone that asks for recommendations. I use typescript daily and have been hoping that this book gets updated for TS although it would be hard since it uses lots of JS tricks that may or may not be best practices in TS. Technically just renaming the files from .js to .TS would work the linter would go crazy
Re: Ask HN: Books that teach programming by building a series of small projects?
#67Peter norvig’s paradigms of artificial intelligence programming, despite its age, is a delight. https://norvig.github.io/paip-lisp/#/
But is that suitable for a beginner?
It depends on what you mean by beginner, but I would say for someone who has been futzing with a couple of js boot camps or building some php websites, it’s what takes you from hacking to software development. Completely new to programming, maybe, if someone has a background in maths or physics and has a sense of “rigor” in thinking.
But, of all the books I worked through, this is the one I remember just having tons of fun because the examples are so cool and the code so… clear. I think norvigs programming course in python (which I only skimmed) could be a great modern equivalent.
Re: Ask HN: Books that teach programming by building a series of small projects?
#68It's not quite the same as what you are looking for, but I've known multiple people who were stuck in their attemp to learn to code before using railstutorial, I view it and the book "sql: visual quickstart guide" as two very well designed intros that manage to avoid having sections with random jumps in difficulty and terminology usage that can leave true beginners behind.
Re: Ask HN: Books that teach programming by building a series of small projects?
#69No joke, "C for Dummies" - it's more teaching you CS101 concepts, less about "C". Tons of examples to go through and the attitude of the author is very helpful compared to a lot of other styles out there.
I was failing my computer science classes first semester. Towards the end of the semester I sat down in the library for a few days and just went page by page typing every example and compiling it. Aced every IT class I had the next few years. I attribute that book to making everything "click" for me.
Once you understand the beginner concepts that book shows, then you as an individual would know where to look to gain improvement.