Pencil Code

by David Bau

This elegant programming primer teaches beginning programming students to code through more than 100 graded examples, each one illustrated in color. Written by a computer scientist to teach his own children to program, the book is designed for inductive learning. There is no expository text. Instead, each important idea is illustrated through a short example. Each program invites customization and exploration. The book begins by suggesting a simple program to draw a line. Subsequent pages introduce core concepts in computer loops, functions, recursion, input and output, numbers and text, and data structures. The book is suitable for learning programmers of all ages. The more advanced material introduces concepts in randomness, animation, HTML5, jQuery, networking, and artificial intelligence. The language used is CoffeeScript. The programs can be run and saved on the web for free on pencilcode.net.

32 pages, Paperback

First published November 25, 2013