Simple Program Design: A Step-by-Step Approach

by Lesley Anne Robertson

Simple Program Design: A Step by Step Approach, Fifth Edition is written for programmers who want to develop good programming skills for solving common business problems. The fifth edition has been thoroughly revised in keeping with modern program design techniques. The easy-to-follow instructional style has been retained along with the language-independent approach to program design. Stressing structured programming and modular design, pseudocode is used as the major program design technique.

Genres: Nonfiction, Programming

347 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1990

Reviews

[Liv · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is horrible only in one context: the DeVry University CIS-115 Logic and Design class does not actually teach from the book. If you wanted to read it just to understand programming logic, I would not recommend the book purely based on the fact that it's too short, does not provide enough actual concept and definitions of logic routines and decisions, and has a habit of reversing or using multiple terminologies for the same concepts interchangeably in a way that makes it hard for a novice student to lock down what the "proper strict pseudo code" language is.

Here's the problem... DeVry is using this text as a backdrop to teach pseudo code using a flowchart and logic-testing program called Visual Logic. Visual Logic does not use the same exact command code words that the text does. So you will actually be docked points in your school work and corrected constantly for using textbook examples of Pseudo code from the book rather than Visual Logic terminology.

An example is the "Display" command.
Say you have a line in p-code that says : DISPLAY "Welcome to the test program" the concept of this p-code command is to output a straight message to be displayed on the monitor. This makes intuitive sense. However, DeVry class instructors and Visual logic uses the terminology OUTPUT for all its display flowchart boxes. This is actually inaccurate, because the term OUTPUT as defined in the textbook, says that is for when you are actually giving out a result or piece of information, such as "A+B = C" calculation displayed on the screen is considered an OUTPUT while DISPLAY term would be used for a silly welcome message.

Yes, I lost points for this, both in homework assignments and in quiz test results. The professors at DeVry do not want to teach you this book, they want to teach you a specific language special only to Visual Logic. Therefore, you are actually almost better off ignoring the book entirely and only reading the in-school live class lectures, the intro and lecture and discussion posts otherwise, trying to waste time understanding this very terse and brief textbook's terminology will only cost you grade points in your class.

[Tim Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a big fan of programming books based soley on pseudocode; however, as these books go, this is a good one.

[Ovais Mughal · Rating 3 out of 5]

its good

[Urbaer]

Simple Program Design attempts to instill best practices into starting out coders. Though the book uses pseudocode and diagrams to make it's points, it didn't really work on me... my code still comes out as a mess of random thoughts.

Though it does have some nice sorting algorithms and gives you a method of determining the efficiency of each in a given situation.

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Logical, easy to follow. Not very exciting, but a good basic starting point for learning to code.

[SHER AHMED · Rating 4 out of 5]

its new

[Emmanuel Asamoah]

good

[John Chirwa · Rating 5 out of 5]

THIS IS THE BEST BOOK EVER FOR A BEGINNER IN PROGRAMMING

[Wilsen]

i like this book