New Titles
This week I’m really proud to announce that I’ve been promoted to “Senior Executive Bartender.” Ha, If you got that reference congratulations you are old enough to have been a fan of Cheers! If you don’t know what Cheers is, then we will just move along.
But seriously folks I really am excited to announce two new books available for your courses this Fall. The first is How to Think like a Computer Scientist C++ interactive edition. This is an Allen Downey book in the same basic pattern as the thinkcspy book on Runestone but in C++. Barb Ericson and her students at the University of Michigan (The other U of M) have been working on doing the conversion to an interactive eBook this summer and it looks great, and really exercises all of the work we have done on improving C++ activecode, CodeLens, and unit tests for C++.
A few people have asked me about the Java version in this series, and all I can say is that I hope someone will take up the task! I think that with the work Barb and her students have done here, and the fact that the books are quite similar that it would be easy to adapt the C++ to Java. Any takers?
The second new book Mastering Relational Databases by Libby Shoop at Macalester College has a wonderful back story that fills my heart with joy. This is a great new book that I hope many undergraduate institutions will adopt. It is also the first major work to feature SQL in the browser with unit tests! But thats not the reason I am so happy to see this published? I’ll let Libby give you a preview:
A great deal of the material in part 2 was originally written by John Carlis for an audience that included a wide range of people, from undergraduate and graduate students to experienced computing professionals. His unpublished manuscript was entitled “Mastering Database Querying and Analysis”. Its primary focus was relational algebra precedence charts. In 2015, three years before his death, he had given me permission to edit a copy of his material to make it approachable for undergraduate students. This online book is the result of my attempt at that task, most of which I am completing after his death.
John was my Masters advisor at the University of Minnesota (the *real* U of M), and an amazing mentor to many many students. He was Libby’s PhD adisor, and we crossed over for a few years when we were both John’s students. John was the person who encouraged me to write my first book. He was an amazing teacher, mentor and huge proponent of active learning and practicing. I believe he would be very happy to see this book come to life on the Runestone Platform! I’ve written more about John’s influence on my life’s path on my personal blog
There are more new titles in the works, but I’ll save them for another day. Please help us spread the word and tell your friends and colleagues.