Table of Contents

Part 1: Not Learned in School.- 1. A Coding Fantasy.- 2. Coding Tricks.- 3. Style.- 4. More Coding Tricks.- Part 2: Coding Advice.- 5. Function Design.- 6. Self-Documenting Code.- 7. Step-Wise Refinement.- 8. Comments.- 9. Stop Coding.- 10. Testing.- 11. Defensive Programming.- 12. Refactoring.- 13. Write The Tests First (Sometimes).- 14. Expert Advice.- Part 3: Perspective.- 15. A Lesson In Design.- 16. Beware Of OOP.- 17. The Evolution Of A Function.- 18. Do Not Snub Inefficient Algorithms.- Part 4: Walk the Walk.- 19.Problems Worth Solving.- 20. Problem Solving.- 21. Dynamic Programming.

About the Author

Michael Stueben started teaching Fortran at Fairfax High School in Virginia in 1977. Eventually the high school computer science curriculum changed from Fortran to BASIC, Pascal, C, C++, Java, and finally to Python. In the last five years, Stueben taught artificial intelligence at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, VA. Along the way, he wrote a regular puzzle column for Discover Magazine, published articles in Mathematics Teacher and Mathematics Magazine, published a book on teaching high school mathematics: Twenty Years Before the Blackboard (Mathematical Association of America, 1998). In 2006 he received a Distinguished High School Mathematics Teaching / Edyth May Sliffe Award from the Mathematical Association of America.