Summary
I have started work on an introductory textbook to programming and I am inviting feedback on my choice of languages and layout.

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I've started work on a rather ambitious book called Fundamentals of Programming which will be intended as a programming book for people starting at the very beginning. I thought I would invite some feedback about my proposed structure.

I plan on breaking the book up into the following sections, with the primary example language for that section.

1. Programming Basics - Cat
2. Pointers and Memory Addressing - C++
3. Object Oriented Programming - Java
4. Functional Programming - Scheme
5. Mixed Paradigm Programming - Scala
6. Software Design - Cross Language

The language I associated with each section would be by no means exclusive. I would introduce that particular language, familiarize the user with it, and use it for the bulk of the examples.

One reason for using multiple languages is that I want beginners to be exposed to a wide breadth of languages, and ways of thinking. I want people to feel they are getting their money's worth by becoming familiar with several different major languages.

The usage of the Cat language is risky, since no one has heard of it. However, I really like the idea of starting a lesson on programming using the example of postfix calculators. This leads naturally to an interpreted stack based language.

The choice of Scala, is potentially contentious because Scala isn't as mature as Haskell or OCaml. However Scala is chock full of support for advanced programming techniques, it is type safe, and it has a sane syntax.

The final section would introduce the concept of using the appropriate language(s) for the job. As such I would be sure to mention languages like: Perl, PHP, Python, Assembly, TCL, and others.

The order of these sections are not intended as hard and fast rules. I am hoping to design the book such that entire sections can be skipped or moved. For example, Pointers and Memory Addressing can be placed at the end, or left out entirely. Another possibility is that Functional Programming can be placed before Object Oriented Programming.

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About the Blogger

Christopher Diggins is a software developer and freelance writer. Christopher loves programming, but is eternally frustrated by the shortcomings of modern programming languages. As would any reasonable person in his shoes, he decided to quit his day job to write his own ( www.heron-language.com ). Christopher is the co-author of the C++ Cookbook from O'Reilly. Christopher can be reached through his home page at www.cdiggins.com.