How to Think Like a Computer Scientist: C Version

Reviewed by Carter Tiernan, Assoc. Prof. of Instruction, University of Texas at Arlington on 3/2/20

Comprehensiveness rating: 5 see less

Very good coverage of all beginning topics in C. I might have chosen to emphasize control structures a little more as they appear in the text but they are well integrated and used in a meaningful way.

Content Accuracy rating: 4

A little stale but still very usable

Relevance/Longevity rating: 4

A little stale but still very usable

Clarity rating: 5

Excellent clarity with good examples in a simple style.

Consistency rating: 5

Very well structured. Content is brought in as needed and motivated by previous content.

Modularity rating: 5

Well-designed sections cover each new topic.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 5

Nice flow through the book. Topics arise organically from previous work.

Interface rating: 5

Simple pdf format is easy to use. The text does not have hyperlinks or accompanying interactive work.

Grammatical Errors rating: 5

The grammar is appropriate to the subject. Clear, correct, and error free.

Cultural Relevance rating: 5

The text makes very few assumptions about the user other than assuming that the user understands arithmetic rules and basic English grammar rules. These concepts are then used in discussing the C programming language.

Comments

This author writes simply and concisely. I have suggested this book in the past as an additional class reference but now I will move to using this as the primary class text.

Reviewed by Ivo Georgiev, Affiliate Faculty, Metropolitan State University of Denver on 7/25/19

Comprehensiveness rating: 5 see less

The book is intended as a very first introduction into computer science and programming. As such, its content is well-balanced in comprehensiveness and conciseness. A programming book should not distract with verbose text and this book strikes a good middle ground between the mutually contradicting requirements to explain unintuitive new concepts to novices and keeping the path to experiential proficiency short. The topic of programming in the C language is vast, and the content selection represents a carefully selected minimal set of chapters which is both manageable for first-time programmers and a good basis for further growth. The topics and narrative are true to the title, with the author anticipating the usual suspects of tough concepts to teach the reader just in time. Importantly, the original book (The C++ Version) lacks exercises. The translator has added a very good set of exercises to the end of each chapter, an important contribution.

Content Accuracy rating: 5

The selected content is accurate. The depth of the content is chosen carefully to keep the narrative as short as possible yet informative enough to create a good grounding in the most important concepts in C programming, including short forays into the C Standard Library, a sine qua non resource for any C programmer. Despite the C language being the focus and main conduit for computer-science thinking in the book, the concepts are presented in as generic way as possible, allowing the student mind to generalize in the future when it encounters the second programming language in the student’s academic or professional career.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 3

The C programming language is one of the oldest languages still in active use. In fact, its popularity is still growing so that it is a very close second, after Java, on the Tiobe index (https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/). The relevance of the material is, thus, mostly appropriate. As the book presents the C98 standard of the C language, there are minor parts that are outdated. Despite the omission of some important additions and updates that came with C99 (1999) and C01 (2001), the backward compatibility of the major C compilers ensure that the book remains relevant to this day. The C99/C01 changes in no way comprised a major evolution of the C language, so the book remains a great introduction to it and programming in general.

Clarity rating: 4

The style of the author is refreshingly clear. Most of this comes from the conciseness and directness of presentation of the topics. The author is aware of the depth of each topic and abstains with discipline to keep the progression very gradual and not to throw the student in at the deep end, which is very easy when introducing a complete novice into such a complex topic. There are only 2-3 spots in the narrative the reviewer believes can be edited to reduce the conceptual change required of the student.

Consistency rating: 5

The progression of topics is perfectly constructed to serve the dual goal of narrative conciseness and comprehensiveness of the material. This is usually a difficult task in programming-language books. The author “stays the course” firmly and resists the inevitable urge to throw in an extra detail. This keeps the cognitive load on the student at an appropriate level consistently throughout the narrative.

Modularity rating: 5

The segregation of the content into chapters is very good. This is another problem with many programming language books, especially when there are language revisions and evolution. Each chapter presents a standalone set of new concepts well grounded in the previous chapters. The exercises at the end of the chapters extend just a step or two beyond the explicitly covered material, which is just enough to prod the student to apply their knowledge and “play”, a very important habit for a computer scientist.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 5

The topic progression is kept both minimal in terms of new material and unflinching of important details. This is to say that the student has just enough capacity to grasp the main computer science ideas and programming best practices while informed on time about important idiosyncrasies and deviations of the C language. In each case, these details are either explained briefly so as not to keep the student in a lurch, or are given prominent place in the very next chapter.

Interface rating: 3

From the very start, the book makes good use of code examples and figures. Most fortunately, the author has chosen to introduce state diagrams and call-stack sketches as an indispensable mental tool for the novice student. The abstractness of topic of programming and the unintuitiveness of some computer science concepts can be mitigated with visual aids, and the author employs them without fuss at the first appropriate occasion. This said, the book can be updated to modern-day interface standards by having a website with many hyperlinks to more in-depth material, language and library references, and additional explanations and exercises.

Grammatical Errors rating: 4

There are just a handful of minor grammatical errors that do not detract from the narrative or obscure a topic.

Cultural Relevance rating: 5

The topic of the book is sufficiently abstract that there are minimal cultural references and they are appropriately unbiased. The style of the book is friendly and accessible. The language of the book is English, which has so far been the worldwide standard for a first book on any programming language. A website might make it easier for the content to be translated into other languages for students who do not have sufficient knowledge of English.

Comments

I am considering adopting this book for the Introduction to Computer Engineering course I am teaching. If I decide to do so, I will rework the content according to the review sections above (clarity, relevance, grammatical errors) and bring the interface up to modern expectations, all within the CC BY-NC license.