Computer Science Programming Basics in Ruby

If you know basic high-school math, you can quickly learn and apply the core concepts of computer science with this concise, hands-on book. Led by a team of experts, you’ll quickly understand the difference between computer science and computer programming, and you’ll learn how algorithms help you solve computing problems. Each chapter builds on material introduced earlier in the book, so you can master one core building block before moving on to the next. You’ll explore fundamental topics such as loops, arrays, objects, and classes, using the easy-to-learn Ruby programming language. Then you’ll put everything together in the last chapter by programming a simple game of tic-tac-toe.

Author Ophir Frieder offers insights on his latest book, "Computer Science Programming Basics in Ruby"

"Computer Science Programming Basics in Ruby" is timely as many of the world's web sites and applications are built with a framework called Ruby on Rails. The core of that framework is a programming language called Ruby.

It turns out that Ruby is an exceptional language with which to teach introductory computer science topics. Hence, a rare combination of thing-that-is-useful, along with thing-that-is-good-to-teach has occurred.

Our book is the first to really treat Ruby as a solid introductory programming language with which to teach core computer science topics. Ruby's simplicity in demonstrating key concepts, coupled with its powerful nature, makes it an ideal instructional language for "the non-specialist", i.e., programming concepts for all.

People who finish the text and do the exercises will have reasonable competence with the Ruby programming language and can use it to write programs on their own. They will know the basics of computer science as well. The book isn't just tradecraft on how to write a program-- it teaches fundamental concepts found in every introductory computer science text.