It's easier to learn how to program a computer than it has ever been before. Now everyone can learn to write programs for themselves - no previous experience is necessary. Chris Pine takes a thorough, but lighthearted approach that teaches you the fundamentals of computer programming, with a minimum of fuss or bother. Whether you are interested in a new hobby or a new career, this book is your doorway into the world of programming.

Computers are everywhere, and being able to program them is more important than it has ever been. But since most books on programming are written for other programmers, it can be hard to break in.
 

At least it used to be. Chris Pine will teach you how to program. You'll learn to use your computer better, to get it to do what you want it to do. Starting with small, simple one-line programs to calculate your age in seconds, you'll see how to write interactive programs, to use APIs to fetch live data from the internet, to rename your photos from your digital camera, and more. You'll learn the same technology used to drive modern dynamic websites and large, professional applications.
 

Whether you are looking for a fun new hobby or are interested in entering the tech world as a professional, this book gives you a solid foundation in programming. Chris teaches the basics, but also shows you how to think like a programmer. You'll learn through tons of examples, and through programming challenges throughout the book. When you finish, you'll know how and where to learn more - you'll be on your way.

What You Need:

All you need to learn how to program is a computer (Windows, macOS, or Linux) and an internet connection. Chris Pine will lead you through setting set up with the software you will need to start writing programs of your own.

What’s New in This Edition

For the third edition of this book, I’ve updated all the examples for Ruby 3, the latest version of the language. Since the second edition came out around when Ruby 2 did, it seemed like the right thing to do and the right time to do it.

It also gave me a chance to update the examples for the world we live in. Some of the jokes and references stopped being funny/cute around 2012 or so.

Best of all, though, I added a new chapter! It’s about APIs and how to use them. I figured that since it’s so easy now to write programs that talk across the Internet to programs on the other side of the world, I just had to show you how it’s done.
 

AND… I fixed a typo that no one had found in 18 years, which I kind of can’t believe, but there it is.

What Is Programming?

Programming is telling your computer how to do something. Large tasks must be broken down into smaller tasks, which must be broken down into still smaller tasks, continuing down to the simplest tasks that you don’t have to describe—the tasks your computer already knows how to do. (These are really basic things such as arithmetic or displaying some text on your screen.)
 

My biggest problem when I was learning to program was that I was trying to learn it backwards. I knew what I wanted the computer to do and tried working backward from that, breaking it down until I got to something the computer knew how to do. Bad idea. I didn’t know what the computer could do, so I didn’t know what to break the problem down to. (Mind you, now that I do know, this is exactly how I program. But it doesn’t work to start that way.)

That’s why you’re going to learn it differently. You’ll first learn about some of the things your computer can do and then break some simple tasks down into steps your computer can handle. Your first program will be so easy, it won’t even take you a minute.
 

One reason your first program will be so easy is that you’ll be writing it in one of the more elegant programming languages, Ruby. It’s a good choice for a first programming language.