Those who teach entry-level courses in computer science are familiar with the problems that beginning students encounter. Initially,student can gets so involved in learning a language that they may fail to grasp the significance of using the language to solve problems.Conversely,it is possible to emphasize problem solving to the extant that using a particular language to solve problems becomes almost incidental.The intent of this text is to fall somewhere in between these two extremes.The broader goals are for students to understand language concepts and subsequently be able to use them to solve problems.

      The third edition of this text was intented to be a fine-tuning of a well-accepted second edition.This goal has been accomplished. Without actually counting,an average of more than 10 changes per pagev appears to have been made throughout the text. Given the length of the text,this means that approximately 9,000 changes have probably been made in the process of revising the previous edition.
      However,as always happens during a revision,more has been done than was originally intented when the process began.In addition to the fine-tuning,I have incresed the technical level of presentation,the emphasis on communication as part of computer science,the documentation for loops and selection,the use of descriptive identifiers,and the emphasis on ethics in computer science.All of these changes will be discussed in more detail later in this preface.

Chapter 1 Computer Science,Computer Architecture, and Computer Language
Chapter 2 Writing Your First Programs
Chapter 3 Arithmetic,Variables,Input,Constants, and Standard Functions
Chapter 4 Designing and Writing Complete Programs
Chapter 5 Selection Statements
Chapter 6 Repetition Statements
Chapter 7 Subprograms: Writing Procedures and Functions
Chapter 8 Subprograms: Using Procedures and Functions
Chapter 9 Text Files and Enumerated Data Types
Chapter 10 One-Dimensional Arrays
etc.