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If you know basic high-school math, you can quickly learn and apply the core concepts of computer science with this concise, hands-on book. Led by a team of experts, you'll quickly understand the difference between computer science and computer programming, and you'll learn how algorithms help you solve computing problems.

Each chapter builds on material introduced earlier in the book, so you can master one core building block before moving on to the next. You'll explore fundamental topics such as loops, arrays, objects, and classes, using the easy-to-learn Ruby programming language. Then you'll put everything together in the last chapter by programming a simple game of tic-tac-toe.

• Learn how to write algorithms to solve real-world problems
• Understand the basics of computer architecture
• Examine the basic tools of a programming language
• Explore sequential, conditional, and loop programming structures
• Understand how the array data structure organizes storage
• Use searching techniques and comparison-based sorting algorithms
• Learn about objects, including how to build your own
• Discover how objects can be created from other objects
• Manipulate files and use their data in your software

David Grossman is the Associate Director of the Information Retrieval Lab at Georgetown University and the Chair of the Steering Committee for the ACM Conference on Information and Knowledge Management.
Previously, he was an Associate Professor of Computer Science and the Director of the Information Retrieval Laboratory at the Illinois Institute of Technology. He was a Principal Investigator on several NSF grants that solely focused on improving the computer science undergraduate curriculum. He also chaired, for over 6 six years, the IIT Computer Science Undergraduate Studies Committee and led the department through two successful ABET reviews. He has taught computer science courses at all levels (freshman through PhD seminars) at IIT, the University of Maryland, George Washington University, and George Mason University.

Ophir Frieder holds the Robert L. McDevitt, K.S.G., K.C.H.S. and Catherine H. McDevitt L.C.H.S. Chair in Computer Science and Information Processing and is Chair of the Department of Computer Science at Georgetown University. He is also Professor of Biostatistics, Bioinformatics and Biomathematics in the Georgetown University Medical Center. He is a Fellow of the AAAS, ACM, and IEEE.

Gideon Frieder is the former Dean of Engineering and currently A. James Clark Professor Emeritus of Engineering and Applied Science in the School of Engineering of George Washington University. Author of various academic publications in areas of Physics, Logic, medical applications and computer design, his background includes industrial and academic development of sophisticated projects such as complex systems (in the Israeli DoD), an innovative universal emulator/computer used, among other applications, in the certification of the Trident Submarine firing systems (in the US, viaindustrial corporations) and the design of a solar car that won the first place in the world in the 1995 Word Solar Challenge in Japan. ( George Washington University).
In all cases, the development was from the "glean in the eye" phase, through basic research followed by development, design, certification and prototype.