Explorations in Computing

An Introduction to Computer Science

by John S. Conery

Explorations in Computing is an introduction to computer science for non-majors and pre-majors. The book is a general overview of the field, introducing students to key concepts in computing and "computational thinking."

The distinguishing feature of this book is its active learning approach. Each chapter includes a step by step tutorial project that guides students through an interactive exercise to explore computation by running programs and trying them out on different inputs.

Rather than teach students how to write programs, the approach used for the projects in this book is to have students develop a basic "literacy" so they can understand programs that have already been written. The software used for lab projects is all written in Ruby, a popular open-source programming language. By reading descriptions Ruby programs, and then watching the programs in action, students gain first-hand experience with algorithms and important ideas in computation. Students are not expected to have any prior experience with computer programming. Ruby constructs used throughout the book are introduced in the first few chapters.

Preface | Table of Contents | Sample Chapter | Errata

New Electronic Edition

An e-ebook is now available from vitalsource.com.

2012/01/24

Released version 0.9.5 of the RubyLabs gem.

RubyLabs Update Instructions

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The tutorial projects described in the text can be run on any personal laptop or desktop computer. To set up a "computational workbench" to carry out these experiments, simply install three pieces of open source software:

The Ruby programming language.

Tk, a third-party software library used for interactive graphics.

RubyLabs, a set of modules written specifically for the exercises in the text.

Detailed instructions for how to install these packages can be found on the Software Installation page.

RDoc Documentation for RubyLabs

The Lab Manual, written for beginning students, contains instructions for installing lab software, running interactive programs with a terminal emulator, and how to use a simple text editor to view and modify programs and data files. It also includes a reference section for the RubyLabs modules used in each chapter.