COMP 1000: Think Like a Computer The PreTeXt Interactive Edition

An email from Mike MacHenry set me straight on tail recursion. He not only pointed out an error in the presentation, but suggested how to correct it.

It wasn’t until 5th Grade student Owen Davies came to me in a Saturday morning Python enrichment class and said he wanted to write the card game, Gin Rummy, in Python that I finally knew what I wanted to use as the case study for the object oriented programming chapters.

A special thanks to pioneering students in Jeff’s Python Programming class at GCTAA during the 2009-2010 school year: Safath Ahmed, Howard Batiste, Louis Elkner-Alfaro, and Rachel Hancock. Your continual and thoughtfull feedback led to changes in most of the chapters of the book. You set the standard for the active and engaged learners that will help make the new Governor’s Academy what it is to become. Thanks to you this is truly a student tested text.

Thanks in a similar vein to the students in Jeff’s Computer Science class at the HB-Woodlawn program during the 2007-2008 school year: James Crowley, Joshua Eddy, Eric Larson, Brian McGrail, and Iliana Vazuka.

Ammar Nabulsi sent in numerous corrections from Chapters 1 and 2.

Aldric Giacomoni pointed out an error in our definition of the Fibonacci sequence in Chapter 5.

Roger Sperberg sent in several spelling corrections and pointed out a twisted piece of logic in Chapter 3.

Adele Goldberg sat down with Jeff at PyCon 2007 and gave him a list of suggestions and corrections from throughout the book.

Ben Bruno sent in corrections for chapters 4, 5, 6, and 7.

Carl LaCombe pointed out that we incorrectly used the term commutative in chapter 6 where symmetric was the correct term.

Alessandro Montanile sent in corrections for errors in the code examples and text in chapters 3, 12, 15, 17, 18, 19, and 20.

Emanuele Rusconi found errors in chapters 4, 8, and 15.

Michael Vogt reported an indentation error in an example in chapter 6, and sent in a suggestion for improving the clarity of the shell vs. script section in chapter 1.