Absolute Beginner's Guide to Programming, Third Edition

Computers and Programming

The book you now hold promises you one thing above all else: to respect your ability to think and learn but not to teach above your head. This book shows that you don't have to be a wizard to become a proficient (or even an expert) programmer. Without programs, computers would be nothing more than big calculators, and people write programs. Thanks to programs, computers become tools that help achieve goals.

Although the computer industry seems to have been around a long time, it is actually one of the newest in existence. Medicine, mathematics, and engineering all date back to the early ages, but the first real computer was invented in the 1940s. As a new programmer, you need to understand the trends of the industry ...