Goal of this book

The goal of this book is to make you a “good” programmer. Despite the fact that a normal high school semester courses run for about 90 days, you will not become an expert programmer in just one semester. It has been said that it takes around 10,000 hours to really become proficient at anything and programming is no different. By the end of this book you will be very much on your way and have a good foundation in the skills you will need. The important thing to remember is that the point is not to teach you a specific programming language, since programming languages come and go and change over time. This is just like real languages.

Although it is the official language of the Catholic Church, not too many people go around on the streets and speak Latin to their friends. Many years ago, it might have been common but not today. The tools you will learn from this book are good programming techniques. These tools will be useful no matter what programming language you are using. Just like in the real world, you cannot be called a “linguist” if you only know one language. The same thing is true for a programmer; knowing more than one programming language is essential. The fortunate thing is that if you know how to solve problems for a computer and know one programming language, picking up a second one is much easier. The cornerstone of being a good programmer is to be able to solve problems in a logical and systematic way and hopefully have fun in the process.