Algorithmic Thinking, 2nd Edition

FOREWORD

For the novice tennis player, keeping the ball in the court is hard enough (especially from the backhand side). Only after months of practice, once the basic rallying skills have been mastered, does the sport and its addictive nature begin to reveal itself. You add to your repertoire more advanced tools—a slice backhand, a kick serve, a drop volley. You strategize at a higher level of abstraction—serve and volley, chip and charge, hug the baseline. You develop intuition for which tools and strategies will be most effective against different types of opponents—there’s no silver-bullet approach that works well against everyone.

Programming is like tennis. For the beginning coder, coaxing the computer to understand what you want it to do—to ...