How to Design Programs, Second Edition

Everyone,<p>if you don&#x27;t have time to read the book, do read the sections with &#x27;design&#x27; in their title. Compare with Josh Bloch&#x27;s apologia for the Java API and then ponder why HtDP[2e] preps readers for OOP anyway. I will try to clarify in HtDComponents (forthcoming, eventually, if I live long enough) and HtDSystems (ditto).<p>I chose small languages -- rejecting powerful Racket features such as define-datatype and pattern matching -- precisely so that the thinking reader and student would be able to adapt the design recipe to almost any language, but especially the popular &quot;scripting languages&quot;, the wanna-be Lisps.<p>Once you program long enough, the design recipe will become second nature and you won&#x27;t notice it anymore. Well, until some &quot;guru&quot; coins a slogan for some aspect of it -- say TDD or Extreme Programming -- and you think &quot;I have seen this before, I just can&#x27;t recall where.&quot; Conversely, I think I have extracted what experienced programmers taught me about programming and what has been at their and my finger tips for a long time.<p>If it helps some, great. If others know it all better, fine.<p>-- Matthias, at it since 1984<p>p.s. If the first sentence seems juvenile, you haven&#x27;t been to a physical book store in a while. When I see those books disappear, the sentence will disappear too. In the meantime, I stand by its essence.

From my cursory glance at the book, I always felt the title was misleading. It is more a general introduction to programming through Scheme, with a focus on good practice than a treatise on software architecture.

As a student having gone through a class for introductory programming with this book (1st addition), I can say this was the best way to get into programming, and the lessons in here lead to a beautiful understanding of computer programming.

Interesting, I like the use of arrows used to explain scope in section 7.

Is second edition complete?

Does anyone have a PDF of this?

why do words like &#x27;idiots&#x27; and &#x27;dummies&#x27; need to be on the first page.

<i>Eesh</i><p>What a horrible title. This is a book about how to program in scheme, not how to design programs. Nothing on architecture or common patterns. Nothing on how to abstract a domain or analyze a problem. Just <i>solutions</i> for common programming a tasks.<p>Not knocking it but its far from design.