Section 1.1 The Way of the Program
The goal of this book is to introduce you to programming computers—an essential element for becoming a computer scientist. Think of this book as giving you a “test drive”; we want you to get an overview of programming and computer science.
At its most basic, we can describe programming as telling a computer how to do something. As a programmer and a computer scientist, the most important skill you can develop is problem solving. Problem solving means:
- The ability to formulate problems: what do we want the computer to do?
- Think creatively about solutions: what steps do we need to get to the solution?
- Express a solution clearly and accurately: how do we put this in a form that the computer can work with?
The process of learning to program is an excellent opportunity to practice problem solving skills. That’s why this chapter is called, The Way of the Program.
