Computer Science by Example

Preface

This book is quite personal to me — it reconstructs the path on which I learned Computer Science: through short exercises in programming. As I write it, I am reminded of of the exciting times when I started programming.

I hope you like it. Happy programming!

— Rudy

This is a book that aims to teach Computer Science with:

more than a hundred programming exercises;
an online judge that automatically provides a score to exercise solutions;
programming-first, theory-later, history-last;
a multi-language and multi-paradigm approach.

For each of the concepts introduced in this book there is an exercise. To help readers study by themselves, they can submit solutions to an automated Online Judge which will run solution programs against a series of test cases.

This is the first volume on a series of books teaching Computer Science. This one introduces Computer Science, Programming and Algorithms. After reading it readers should be equipped to be a programmer and start learning more advanced concepts of CS.

This book start from the very basics and no knowledge of programming is required. This book does assume knowledge of school maths and use of a personal computer.

Experienced programmers learning a new programming language may find the exercises in this first volume useful. The exercises in this book serve not only to introduce programming but also as steping stones to learn any general purpose programming language.

This volume has examples in Python, C and Haskell. Nevertheless, lecturers can use the book with other languages as well, e.g.: Java. Concepts are introduced first in general then specifically on the three languages. As of 2023, the Online Judge of Computer Science by Example supports: C, C++, C#, Haskell, Java, JavaScript, Lua, Python, Ruby, Racket and Scheme.

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