V. Anton Spraul

The premise of this book is quite interesting: instead of focusing on a particular programming language, it is devoted to problem solving and the application of it to programming in general. For instance the first chapter does not contain any code, instead it gives some examples of problems and focuses on how one could go about tackling them and working out a solution. Some important techniques are introduced along the way, such as defining and understanding the problem, dividing the problem and looking for analogies.

In fact as a relatively novice programmer I found this first chapter the most useful, as a lot of the more concrete problems that follow in the book were just too complicated to comprehend. It does not help that C++ is used throughout the book to document the problems - I feel like using pseudocode or at least a simpler language would have aided in helping the more inexperienced programmers grasp the subject. I have to admit that once it got to pointers in chapter 4 I had to give up, as the subject matter was just beyond me (I did manage to get back into it later on in the book though, where the more general approaches to problem solving are discussed again).

So, altogether I feel like this book does a good job at teaching those with less experience how to think like a programmer, however in my opinion more prior experience (in particular with C++) is required to make full use of it. One day I want to come back to the more complex issues here and perhaps they will then make more sense to me.… (mehr)