Learning to Program with Alice
Wanda Dann, Stephen Cooper, and Randy Pausch
Publisher: Prentice Hall
ISBN: 0-13-187289-3, 0-13-239775-7 (brief version)
This book and the associated Alice system take an innovative approach to introductory programming. There have been relatively few innovations in the teaching and learning of programming in the last 30 years, despite the fact that introductory programming courses are often extremely frustrating to students. This approach is only recently possible due to the increased power of desktop computers and the development of novel software that uses that power, especially for 3D graphics. Originally developed as part of a research project in Virtual Reality, Alice lets you be the director of a movie, or the creator of a video game, where 3D objects in an on-screen virtual world move around according to the directions you give them. The goal of our innovative approach is to allow traditional programming concepts to be more easily taught and more readily understood.
Contact your Prentice Hall publishing representative for an examination copy or request a copy online at Prentice Hall's catalog website.
The Alice Software
The Alice system is free and is available at www.alice.org
Sample Selections From the Text:
The following sections provide a sneak peek at the contents of the book
(Please note that this material is from the beta version of the text -- the
final version does have minor modifications):
A List of Errata for the first edition (pdf format).
Please contact us with any errors you find in the text that are not listed here.
Wanda Dann: firstname.lastname@example.org
Stephen Cooper: email@example.com
Don Slater: firstname.lastname@example.org