Table of contents

Coding from First Principles

A beginner-friendly path from writing your first program to building reliable, useful software

Read each section in order. Every title can be opened as a TheoryTrace document.

• Cover
• Copyright
• How to read this book
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: What Programming Really Is
• Chapter 2: Setting Up Your Coding Environment
• Chapter 3: Your First Programs
• Chapter 4: Values, Types, and Variables
• Chapter 5: Input, Output, and Simple Interaction
• Chapter 6: Decisions with Conditional Logic
• Chapter 7: Repetition with Loops
• Chapter 8: Collections of Data
• Chapter 9: Functions and Decomposition
• Chapter 10: Debugging Like a Programmer
• Chapter 11: Designing Algorithms
• Chapter 12: Working with Text, Files, and Data
• Chapter 13: Errors, Exceptions, and Robust Programs
• Chapter 14: Modules, Libraries, and Documentation
• Chapter 15: Testing Your Code
• Chapter 16: Object-Oriented Programming Concepts
• Chapter 17: Data Structures and Performance Basics
• Chapter 18: Version Control with Git
• Chapter 19: Building a Complete Command-Line Project
• Chapter 20: Web and API Foundations
• Chapter 21: Databases and Persistent Storage
• Chapter 22: Building a Small Real-World Application
• Chapter 23: Code Quality, Refactoring, and Readability
• Chapter 24: Your Next Path as a Programmer
• Conclusion