Tkc0100: preface  (Page 2/7)

The many available options can lead to confusion, particularly for beginners, parents, and teachers without a strong technical background.Different items in the above list are best suited to students of different ages with different backgrounds.

In this collection, I will attempt to provide the information needed to helpbeginners, parents, and teachers alike sort through the options in order to navigate apath that makes sense for each particular beginner.

The recommended path

Although my recommendation may change over time as new tools and resources become available, as of May 2013, my recommended path is as follows:

1. Begin with Scratch 2.0 . You can read more about Scratch and some of the other items on my recommended path in thesections that follow. By the time that you finish with Scratch, you should be able to create programs to solve the Blockly maze puzzles . They will test your knowledge of certain aspects of programming logic.
2. When you are comfortable with Scratch, complete the following free online course: Codecademy JavaScript . If you are really ambitious, you might also want to complete Codecademy Ruby .
3. Once you complete the Codecademy JavaScript course, take a temporary departure from programming and learn about another form of coding by completing the following free online course: Codecademy Web Fundamentals .
4. At this point, you will need to graduate into the use of a compiled type-sensitive programming language. My recommendation is to complete all ofthe Programming Fundamentals modules at Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) with Java .
5. Next you should take a look at the Objects First module at Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) with Java .
6. Following that, you should study the modules in ITSE 2321 , ITSE 2317 , GAME 2302 , and Anatomy of a Game Engine at Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) with Java .

There are many other resources in the above list that are worth pursuing. However, once you reach the end of this recommended path , you will be sufficiently wellinformed that you will no longer need my recommendations to help you chart your path forward.

Programming knowledge requirements

Several years ago, I extracted information from various Texas State documents in an attempt to get a handle on the minimum level of programming knowledge thatis required for students to graduate from a Texas high school with one or more courses in computer science. By organizingthat material, I came up with the list in Appendix A as the minimum list of items that must be understood by the graduating student.

Won't cover the first three items

I probably won't attempt to cover the first three items in the list in Appendix A . Instead, I will recommend that you go on the web or go to a used bookstore to purchaseand then study the first few chapters of any one of hundreds of textbooks on programming fundamentals that have been published in the past twenty years that cover those items. Thatmaterial hasn't changed much in twenty years so it doesn't need to be a new textbook. Furthermore, that material is generally independent of the programminglanguage being used, so it doesn't even need to be a textbook for a specific programming language.