The main goal of this book is to teach fundamental programming principles to beginners using Julia , one of the fastest growing programming languages today. Julia can be classified as a "modern" language, possessing many features not available in more popular languages like C and Java.

The book is organized in 10 chapters. Chapter 1 gives an overview of the programming process. It shows how to write a first Julia program and introduces some of the basic building blocks needed to write programs. Chapter 2 is all about numbersintegers, floating-point, operators, expressionshow to work with them and how to print them. Chapter 3 shows how to write programs which can make decisions. It explains how to use if and ifelse statements. Chapter 4 explains the notion of 'looping', implemented using for and while statements. It also explains how to read data from a file and write results to a file. Chapter 5 formally treats with functions, enabling a (large) program to be broken up into smaller manageable units which work together to solve a given problem. Chapter 6 is devoted to characters and strings. In Julia , we can work with them as seamlessly as we do with numbers. Chapter 7 tackles array processing, which is significantly easier in Julia than other languages. Chapter 8 is about sorting and searching techniques. Sorting puts data in an order that can be searched more quickly/easily, and makes it more palatable for human consumption. Chapter 9 introduces structures , enabling us to group data in a form that can be manipulated more easily as a unit. Chapter 10 deals with two useful data structuresdictionaries and sets. These enable us to solve certain kinds of problems more easily and conveniently than we can without them.

This book is intended for anyone who is learning programming for the first time. The presentation is based on the fact that many students (though not all) have difficulties in learning programming. To overcome this, the book uses an approach which provides clear examples, detailed explanations of very basic concepts and numerous interesting problems (not just artificial exercises whose only purpose is to illustrate some language feature).

Teaches fundamental programming principles to beginners Introduces Julia, a modern programming language, step by step Provides lots of examples, detailed explanations of basic concepts and numerous interesting problems

Autorentext

Dr. Noel Kalicharan is a Senior Lecturer in Computer Science at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad. For more than 30 years, he has taught programming courses to people at all levels. He has been teaching programming, among other things, at the University since 1976. In 1988, he developed and hosted a 26-programme television series entitled Computers - Bit by Bit. Among other things, this series taught programming to the general public. He is always looking for innovative ways to teach logical thinking skills which go hand in hand with programming skills. His efforts resulted in two games - BrainStorm! and Not Just Luck - which won him the Prime Minister's Award for Invention and Innovation in 2000 and 2002. He is a Computer Science author for Cambridge University Press which published his international successes, Introduction to Computer Studies and C By Example. The C book is ranked among the best in the world for learning the C programming language. It has received glowing reviews from readers as far away as Australia, Canada, India and Scotland. This book is written in a more leisurely style. Born in Lengua Village, Princes Town, Trinidad, he received his primary education at the Lengua Presbyterian School and his secondary education at Naparima College. He is a graduate of The University of the West Indies, Jamaica, the University of British Columbia, Canada and The University of the West Indies, Trinidad.

Inhalt

1. Elementary Concepts.- 2. Numbers.- 3. Selection Logic.- 4. The for and while Statements.- 5. Functions.- 6. Characters & Strings.- 7. Arrays.- 8. Searching, Sorting and Merging.- 9. Structures.- 10. Dictionaries & Sets.