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| Learning to Program with Alice | 
 enlarge | Authors: Wanda P. Dann, Stephen Cooper, Randy Pausch
Publisher: Prentice Hall
Category: Book
List Price: $58.00
Buy Used: $17.87
You Save: $40.13 (69%)
New (17) Used (23) from $17.87
Avg. Customer Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 37204
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 375
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.9 x 7.7 x 0.7
ISBN: 0131872893
Dewey Decimal Number: 006
EAN: 9780131872899
ASIN: 0131872893
Publication Date: July 25, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
This guide supports an innovative approach to fundamental programming concepts. The authors use program visualization to create an easy relationship between program construct and the animation action in a 3D world. Final release is in full color. For consistency with Java, C++, and other commonly used languages, "questions" are now "functions." Save and reload bugs have been fixed. Fonts can be scaled larger or smaller. High contrast mode is available for projection in the classroom. A much larger local gallery is now loaded with Alice; the CD with the book contains the complete gallery, so Internet access for downloading 3D models is no longer required. A useful how-to guide for programmers interested in learning Alice.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 4 more reviews...
 lovely innovation in teaching programming October 19, 2005
25 out of 27 found this review helpful
In a way, this is a tricky book for me to review. I learnt programming with Fortran on punch cards [remember them?]. Then later gravitated to other languages like Pascal, C and Java. But it was only in the 90s that languages started coming out with graphics built in. Prior to that, it was mostly text and binary Input/Output. That was our User Interface, shocking as it might seen to some of you. So there were always abstractions in learning a language, from the very start.
The authors of this book are spot on in saying that there has been little or no change in the teaching of programming to beginners, in the last 30 years. The languages being taught may have changed. Some are now object oriented, and have graphics libraries. But the basic pedagogy has remained constant all this time. So for example the classic "Pascal: User Manual and Report" from 1980 and a current book on Java have this in common.
The innovation offered by Alice is a stark contrast indeed. Alice lets you learn [or teach] a special programming language that manipulates objects in a three dimensional world. The emphasis is on the object-oriented nature of Alice. While other languages use the metaphor of OO mapping to and from real world objects, Alice gives a literal visual mapping that students can readily comprehend. Alice removes the middleman metaphor.
Interestingly, the authors suggest that Alice shifts some of the mental effort from the student's cognition to her perceptual [visual] system. Her visual incoming bandwidth is so large that visual changes can be readily understood.
The authors cite studies that show a faster uptake by students using Alice, compared to students without Alice. And more girls seem to go further with their programming. One could wonder if this ties into other studies suggesting that boys have [slightly] better abstract spatial understanding. By reducing this need, does Alice make programming more accessible to girls?
Alice has several niceties that aid in its usage. Especially useful is the lack of syntax issues. The essentially menu or icon driven implementation means that a student does not have to type in syntax. Hence avoiding a common source of errors. For students with a limited attention span, this removes a big source of frustration.
To be sure, Alice is just meant as a teaching language. Students are expected to graduate onto more realistic languages. But Alice can help those delicate cases of newcomers to programming retain some knowledge, and possibly even take more advanced courses. Here, the authors point out that an important special usage is for a course aimed at students who will not be programmers. That will be their first and only programming course. The teaching of such a course is important, and Alice might help.
If this book is well received, then a companion book would be helpful. The current book is meant for an instructor, though some students could certainly use it. What is needed is a simpler book, aimed perhaps at the primary school level, for the student reader. Maybe Dann et al are already working on that?
 Good for Students - Not So Good for Casual Use November 18, 2006
10 out of 11 found this review helpful
If you're already teaching or taking a course in Alice, you'll at least need access to this book. Being by the developers and also first to market - it is the standard text. As a text, it's also very good - but also focused on teaching programming principles, not doing animations.
If you've never heard of Alice or just have a general interest in it's capabilities, I'd suggest you download the program from the web first (it's free from CMU) and see what you think of it. If it interests you and seems to fit your needs (note you can't output standard video files such as .mov and/or .avi and the .html output is buggy), then invest in one of the texts.
Used it as textbook. Excellent! July 20, 2007
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
"One of Alice's real strengths is that it has been able to make abstract concepts concrete in the eyes of first- time programmers. " - Forward to the book.
I used this book as a textbook in a one-semester introduction to programming course in my high school. I intend to use it again next year. Here is why:
Each chapter begins with a motivational overview of the chapter's topic and end with exercises and projects. Storyboards are used to provide an algorithmic step-by-step description of the example animation. Screenshots of code and visual setting allowed students to recreate and closely follow the covered topic.
Student had their copies of the book open next to their workstations. Throughout the course, they were focused, on task and having fun. This made my experience teaching the course very rewarding. Answers to end of chapter exercises, projects and instructional support material are available to instructors on [..]
With no hesitation I give it 5 stars.
M. Kadri (High School Teacher, New York, NY USA)
Excellent Textbook January 16, 2007
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
I used this book as a textbook in a 'Programming with Multimedia Projects' college class. I thought it was very easy to understand, and I liked the way the material is presented: Using the Alice program (included on a CD-ROM with the book), each chapter walks you through each new topic in a few different 'lab exercises'. You are then able to apply what you have learned to 'project questions' at the end of each chapter. The only problem would be that if you are not part of a class when you are going through this book, questions would remain unanswered as there are no solutions in the back of the book (such as all odd-numbered questions, etc.). I believe it would be difficult for some to use this book as a stand-alone learning tool.
Useless ... for a basic programmer January 28, 2008
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
If you know the ABCs of programming already, this book is useless for you. Alice is soooo simple, it's absolutely easy for you to figure out on your own how each element in Alice works. On the other hand, if you don't know what "Java" or "C++" is, ummm ... buy this book.
Actually, even if you don't know any programming language at all, Alice has an inbuilt tutorial, which is fairly simple to follow and covers most of what this book does.
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