Learning to Program

Whether you want to become a professional programmer or not, you can benefit from programming skills -- and once you get started, you just might want to enter this growing field after all. Don't be intimidated by programming: Learning to Program will help you master the basic concepts even if you have absolutely no experience… even if you've found yourself confused by other "beginning programming" books!

Author Steven Foote never learned programming in school: he taught himself, figuring out the best ways to understand each concept and overcome each obstacle. Now a full-time professional web developer, Foote helps you follow in his footsteps. He talks to you where you are, assuming no technical background at all. He guides you through all the fundamentals, teaching ideas you can use no matter what modern programming language you choose later, or which devices you'd like to program for.

You'll learn how to organize a program, access and store data, control program flow, test and debug your code, and reuse code so you needn't create it again from scratch. Foote clearly introduces key concepts such as variables, operators, file I/O, pointers, arrays, and functions -- all at a careful pace that's perfect for non-programmers. Each chapter is illustrated with a short hands-on project showing you how to build a simple, useful extension for the Google Chrome web browser. You'll be surprised how easy it is to accomplish real programming tasks -- and, like Foote himself, you may well be inspired to go a whole lot further.

Steven Foote is a web developer at LinkedIn. A self-taught programmer who loves technology, especially the Web, he has a Bachelor’s degree and Master’s degree in Accountancy from Brigham Young University. While working on his Master’s degree, he built all aspects of two AJAX-y web applications, from visual design to server and database maintenance, and everything in between.