Cooking up some new Posts!

Cooking with Code and Logic

I want to apologize to the followers of this blog for its inactivity. I have been working on a variety of projects over the past year but have recently refocused my efforts creating a new eBook for first-time programmers. 

This eBook will be much different than anything I have done before and will focus on small vignettes of introductory computer topics that I hope will eventually be published in the Kindle environment.

I have for some time been talking about a textbook centered on 25 or so primary design patterns used by all programs. My thinking is that the 80-20 not only explains how many things work but how if also applies to programming. In short, with just a little fundamental knowledge (a few design patterns) any programmer, even a new programmer, can create a lot of software applications.

In this new approach, I am also using a new metaphor. Rather than focusing on the techno- babble normally associated with software development, I am instead going to use cooking as the guide for learning how to program.

I have often used the analogy that a computer program is much like a recipe. I intend on taking that one step farther by using cooking (and eating) to explain sometimes complicated programming concepts. This certainly meets the spirit of this blog that tries to help anyone who wants to learn how to write computer programs.

So how was cooking like programming? I already explained how I used a recipe to define programming to new programmers. With a recipe, the instructions are sequential, they must be followed in order using ingredients and measurements as specified by the cook. Programmers must do much the same. The computer will only do what is told (by the programmer) and there's nothing built into the computer that will tell you when you're asked it to do something which doesn't make sense.  Create the incorrect logic steps and you will get a program that not do what you want it to do. A cook faces the same problem with a recipe. The recipe must be followed exactly and if you change the order of the recipe then the result will certainly be less than desirable,

Cook's use seasonings and spices along with utensils and pans to create something to eat. The programmer uses variables, constants. calculations, decisions, loops and expressions in much the same way. 

In my cookbook of code, I will focus pseudo code. Pseudo code looking and acting a lot like a recipe. An emphasis on the sequence of the instructions and not an syntax as is the case with computer programming languages. My hope is that by using something that we all are familiar with, cooking, and pseudo code which is more like English sentences, that this will make programming easier for first timers and perhaps add clarity to those were having problems. Stay tuned, first up will be if statements ( or decision structures).