Editorial Review:
It's now easier to learn to write your own computer software 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 light-hearted approach that teaches you how to program with a minimum of fuss or bother. Starting with small, simple one-line programs to calculate your age in seconds, you'll see how to have your webpage send you email, to shuffle your music more intelligently, 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.
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Customer Reviews
Average Customer Rating: 
Great book to teach your kid to program 2008-05-17
I picked up Learn to Program for two reasons:
* I was curious about a book that could teach you to program. Where do you start? Also, I originally learned how to program (in Basic) from a book with no computer.
* I wanted to learn Ruby and that's the programming language that Learn to Program uses.
I was impressed with the book. Chris Pine starts out with the very basics - how to set up your computer with Ruby and how to create and run a program and takes you through a few basic programs, algorithms like sort and finally simple interactive games and file manipulation.
If you are looking to learn how to program or how to teach your kid to program, Learn to Program is a good starting point.
Excellent Book for Beginners  2008-04-06
I bought this book a couple of summers ago. My son and I (he was 11 years of age at the time) worked through most of the exercises in the book together. I took a C programming class years ago. My son is good at math and has solid logic skills. I did a web-search for books focused on teaching kids to program - and I talked to a programmer friend who said that Ruby would be a good first language - so I bought this book. I've looked at some of the recent negative reviews - and while I do think there's room for improvement (such as an answer key) here's the differentiating element: my son and I got stuck on an exercise, so Matt wrote Chris Pine (the author) an email asking for help - a personalized answer was forthcoming the next day! Bottom line: Ruby is an entirely appropriate first language to learn, and this book is extremely applicable to the beginner with no programming background. Will you have to buy a second book to continue your learning after you complete this book? Sure. But isn't that usually the case? I don't know too many books that are appropriate for both beginner and expert - this book helps one do exactly what the title states: Learn to Program. Enjoy!
I never thought I could program...Until NOW! 2007-10-10
I absolutely love this book! I have tried time and time again to get different books and take different classes to learn how to program. Everything from Unix courses to Java, C++, Scripting and many more that were just plain over my head! There are too many "beginner" books that just aren't Beginner enough! I stumbled upon this book in a book store--sat and read 4 pages and knew this would be the book to finally get me programming. I sit and read a chapter or two a day with my laptop and work my way through different exercises. The wonderful thing about Ruby is that it is so versatile. The book can explain the basics and with a little imagination you can come up with your own programs that are slightly different that the exercises given. (Basically each chapter gives building blocks to teach you, but there are more than one way to stack the building blocks and you can make different style buildings with those blocks.) For instance, one assignment was to make a program ask the name of the person typing at the keyboard, then it should repeat the name and say something like, "Oh, BLANK is such a nice name..."
With the building blocks of the chapter, not only was I able to create a program that did just that, I created a program that said,
"Hi, my name is X."
"What's your name?"
[your typed name]
"Wow! [your typed name] is very pretty."
"What is your middle name?"
[your typed middle name]
"And your last name?"
[your typed last name]
"I must say, [your first][your middle][your last name] is absolutely stunning!"
"It was nice chatting with you [your entire name]."
That's one thing I love about this book. It give you the building blocks, and without too much work (because it's so well written,) you build!
Way to Simple and Short  2007-07-05
While looking for a book on entry level ruby programming I came across this. The reviews were good so I bought it. I was extremely disapointed however. First, the book is very small. There simply is not a lot of content here. I did like the type and text and layout.
But the biggest problem and the one not mentioned anywhere is that this is not an entry level programming book. This is one step before that. It simply is "extremely" basic. What I mean by that is that is written for someone who probably has never even messed around with any programming language at all or has a lot of computer knowledge at all. It's like a junior high course to students who don't have a clue. This is great for some, but not mentioned anywhere and surely a disappointment and worthless to anyone who has even wrote a simple hello world program before.
Almost Perfect 2007-07-05
I picked up this book several times at the bookstore but never purchased it until... I read the first chapter. I had always flipped through the book and thought that all of it looked like greek to me, and that I would never be able to understand it.
Once I started reading it, I enjoyed it, I understood it, and I learned the concepts.
I got excited and I bought the ultimate reference to Ruby the "Pick Axe" guide, and I also bought Agile Web Development with Rails.
If Learn to Program would have been bad or badly written I probably would have given up on ever learning to program.
If you are a web developer you owe it to yourself to check out this book. I tried to learn PHP first, but with Ruby and this beginners book to program, I am actually learning it.
It would be even better if it had an index and there was a website you could go to, where you could find help/answers to the extra end of chapter questions.
This is a great place to start to learn how to program.
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