Beginning Programming All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies

Book excerpt: The fun, fast, and easy way to learn programming fundamentals and essentials – from C to Visual Basic and all the languages in between So you want to be a programmer? Or maybe you just want to make your computer do what YOU want for a change? Maybe you enjoy the challenge of identifying a problem and solving it. If programming intrigues you (for whatever reason), Beginning Programming All-In-One Desk Reference For Dummies is like having a starter programming library all in one handy, if hefty, book. In this practical guide, you'll find out about algorithms, best practices, compiling, debugging your programs, and much more. The concepts are illustrated in several different programming languages, so you'll get a feel for the variety of languages and the needs they fill. Inside you'll discover seven minibooks: Getting Started: From learning methods for writing programs to becoming familiar with types of programming languages, you'll lay the foundation for your programming adventure with this minibook. Programming Basics: Here you’ll dive into how programs work, variables, data types, branching, looping, subprograms, objects, and more. Data Structures: From structures, arrays, sets, linked lists, and collections, to stacks, queues, graphs, and trees, you'll dig deeply into the data. Algorithms: This minibook shows you how to sort and search algorithms, how to use string searching, and gets into data compression and encryption. Web Programming: Learn everything you need to know about coding for the web: HyperText. Markup Language (better known simply as HTML), CSS, JavaScript, PHP, and Ruby. Programming Language Syntax: Introduces you to the syntax of various languages – C, C++, Java, C#, Perl, Python, Pascal, Delphi, Visual Basic, REALbasic – so you know when to use which one. Applications: This is the fun part where you put your newly developed programming skills to work in practical ways. Additionally, Beginning Programming All-In-One Desk Reference For Dummies shows you how to decide what you want your program to do, turn your instructions into "machine language" that the computer understands, use programming best practices, explore the "how" and "why" of data structuring, and more. And you'll get a look into various applications like database management, bioinformatics, computer security, and artificial intelligence. After you get this book and start coding, you'll soon realize that — wow! You're a programmer!