Evaluating introductory programming textbooks: A guide for students, instructors, authors and publishers

My father counseled me not to give advice to others. Inspite of that admonition, I have an irrepressible desire to make some highly subjective, potentially pompous remarks about introductory programming language textbooks. During the past nine years I have evaluated dozens of manuscripts for eight publishers and hundreds of books for teaching term-length introductory courses in FORTRAN, BASIC, PL/I, PASCAL, COBOL and assembly languages. I have co-authored two FORTRAN texts and developed two independent study guides to programming. Each time I see a text, I make judgments by reacting to the material, rather than by comparing the material to a pre-determined set of criteria. In order to provide a “structured” review process (no computer-science oriented paper is complete without a reference to “structure”), I offer the following criteria for evaluating texts. This list is far from complete, but it is a beginning.