HACKER Q&A
📣 jph

What topics are good for a software programming primer?


I'm creating a Software Programming Primer as an e-book to help students learn about software development, basic ideas about algorithms and data structures, APIs and SDKs, industry practices, etc.

I have 100 topics or so thus far. What topics do you suggest for a primer?

https://github.com/sixarm/software-programming-primer

This is the sixth primer in a series; all are available at https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson

  👤 jones1618 Accepted Answer ✓
Frankly, your "primer" is more of an encyclopedia and would absolutely overwhelm a beginner. Where would they start? For me an ideal primer would be a pyramid structure, listing five "start here" concepts, maybe divided into five sub-topics each. The rest of the Chinese menu would be references under those.