THE STRANGE HISTORY OF THIS BOOK

In January 1999, I was preparing to teach an introductory programming class in Java. I had taught it three times and I was getting frustrated. The failure rate in the class was too high, and, even for students who succeeded, the overall level of achievement was too low.

One of the problems I saw was the books. I had tried three different books (and had read a dozen more), and they all had the same problems. They were too big, with too much unnecessary detail about Java and not enough high-level guidance about how to program. And they all suffered from the trap door effect: they would start out easy, proceed gradually, and then somewhere around Chapter 4 the bottom would fall out. The students would get too much new material, too fast, and I would spend the rest of the semester picking up the pieces.

Two weeks before the first day of classes, I decided to write my own book. I wrote one 10-page chapter a day for 13 days. I made some revisions on Day 14 and then sent it out to be photocopied.

My goals were:

• Keep it short. It is better for students to read 10 pages than not read 50 pages.

• Be careful with vocabulary. I tried to minimize the jargon and define each term at first use.

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