For courses in Introduction to Computing or Introduction to Programming.   There is a growing interest in computing for non-CS majors, or for students who have not yet determined their majors (sometimes called the “CS0” market). Computer science professors are also confronted with increased attrition and failure rates. Guzdial introduces programming as a way of creating and manipulating media–a context familiar and intriguing to today’s students. Students begin actual programming early on (sometimes over 100 lines of code in the second assignment). Guzdial’s approach has met with substantial success in class testing.

Table of Contents:
I. Introduction   Chapter 1 Introduction to Computer Science and Media Computation             1.1 What Is Computer Science About?             1.2 Programming Languages             1.3 What Computers Understand             1.4 Media Computation: Why Digitize Media?             1.5 Computer Science for Everyone                 1.5.1 It’s About Communication                 1.5.2 It’s About Process   Chapter 2 Introduction to Programming             2.1 Programming Is About Naming                 2.1.1 Files and Their Names             2.2 Programming in Python             2.3 Programming in JES             2.4 Media Computation in JES                 2.4.1 Showing a Picture                 2.4.2 Playing a Sound                 2.4.3 Naming Values             2.5 Making a Program                 2.5.1 Variable Recipes: Real Math-like Functions That Take Input   II Pictures   Chapter 3 Modifying Pictures Using Loops             3.1 How Pictures Are Encoded             3.2 Manipulating Pictures                 3.2.1 Exploring Pictures             3.3 Changing Color Values                 3.3.1 Using Loops in Pictures                 3.3.2 Increasing/Decreasing Red (Green, Blue)                 3.3.3 Testing the Program: Did That ReallyWork?                 3.3.4 Changing one Color at a Time             3.4 Creating a Sunset                 3.4.1 Making Sense of Functions             3.5 Lightening and Darkening             3.6 Creating a Negative             3.7 Converting to Grayscale   Chapter 4 Modifying Pixels in a Range             4.1 Copying Pixels                 4.1.1 Looping Across the Pixels with range             4.2 Mirroring a Picture             4.3 Copying and Transforming Pictures                 4.3.1 Copying                 4.3.2 Creating a Collage                 4.3.3 General Copying                 4.3.4 Rotation                 4.3.5 Scaling   Chapter 5 Advanced Picture Techniques             5.1 Replacing Colors: Red-Eye, Sepia Tones, and Posterizing                 5.1.1 Reducing Red-Eye                 5.1.2 Sepia-Toned and Posterized Pictures: Using Conditionals                           to Choose the Color             5.2 Combining Pixels: Blurring             5.3 Comparing Pixels: Edge Detection             5.4 Blending Pictures             5.5 Background Subtraction             5.6 Chromakey             5.7 Drawing on Images                 5.7.1 Drawing with Drawing Commands                 5.7.2 Vector and Bitmap Representations             5.8 Programs as Specifying Drawing Process                 5.8.1 Why DoWe Write Programs?   Chapter 6 Modifying Sounds Using Loops             6.1 How Sound Is Encoded                 6.1.1 The Physics of Sound                 6.1.2 Exploring How Sounds Look                 6.1.3 Encoding the Sound                 6.1.4 Binary Numbers and Two’s Complement                 6.1.5 Storing Digitized Sounds             6.2 Manipulating Sounds                 6.2.1 Open Sounds and Manipulating Samples                 6.2.2 Using the JES MediaTools                 6.2.3 Looping             6.3 Changing the Volume of Sounds                 6.3.1 Increasing Volume                 6.3.2 Did That ReallyWork?                 6.3.3 Decreasing Volume                 6.3.4 Making Sense of Functions, in Sounds             6.4 Normalizing Sounds                 6.4.1 Generating Clipping   Chapter 7 Modifying Samples in a Range             7.1 Manipulating Different Sections of the Sound Differently             7.2 Splicing Sounds             7.3 General Clip and Copy             7.4 Backwards Sounds             7.5 Mirroring   Chapter 8 Making Sounds by Combining Pieces             8.1 Composing Sounds Through Addition             8.2 Blending Sounds             8.3 Creating an Echo                 8.3.1 Creating Multiple Echoes                 8.3.2 Creating Chords             8.4 How Sampling KeyboardsWork                 8.4.1 Sampling as an Algorithm             8.5 Additive Synthesis                 8.5.1 Making SineWaves                 8.5.2 Adding SineWaves Together                 8.5.3 Checking Our Result                 8.5.4 SquareWaves                 8.5.5 TriangleWaves             8.6 Modern Music Synthesis                 8.6.1 MP3                 8.6.2 MIDI   Chapter 9 Building Bigger Programs             9.1 Designing Programs Top-Down                 9.1.1 A Top-Down Design Example             9.1.2 Designing the top-level function                 9.1.3 Writing the subfunctions             9.2 Designing Programs Bottom-up                 9.2.1 An Example Bottom-Up Process             9.3 TestingYour Program                 9.3.1 Testing the Edge Conditions             9.4 Tips on Debugging                 9.4.1 Finding Which Statement toWorry About                 9.4.2 Seeing the Variables                 9.4.3 Debugging the Adventure Game             9.5 Algorithms and Design             9.6 Running Programs Outside of JES   IV Text, Files, Networks, Databases, and Unimedia   Chapter 10 Creating and Modifying Text             10.1 Text as Unimedia             10.2 Strings: Making and Manipulating Strings             10.3 Manipulating parts of strings                 10.3.1 String Methods: Introducing Objects and Dot Notation                 10.3.2 Lists: Powerful, Structured Text                 10.3.3 Strings Have No Font             10.4 Files: Places to PutYour Strings and Other Stuff                 10.4.1 Opening and Manipulating Files                 10.4.2 Generating Form Letters                 10.4.3 Writing Out Programs             10.5 The Python Standard Library                 10.5.1 More on Import andYour Own Modules                 10.5.2 Another Fun Module: Random                 10.5.3 A Sampling of Python Standard Libraries   Chapter 11 Advanced Text Techniques:Web and Information             11.1 Networks: Getting Our Text from theWeb             11.2 Using Text to Shift Between Media                 11.2.1 Using Lists as Structured Text for Media Representations             11.3 Hiding Information in a Picture   Chapter 12 Making Text for theWeb             12.1 HTML: The Notation of theWeb             12.2 Writing Programs to Generate HTML             12.3 Databases: A Place to Store Our Text                 12.3.1 Relational Databases                 12.3.2 An example relational database using hash tables                 12.3.3 Working with SQL                 12.3.4 Using a Database to BuildWeb Pages   Chapter 13 Creating and Modifying Movies             13.1 Generating Animations             13.2 Working with Video Source                 13.2.1 Video Manipulating Examples             13.3 Building a Video Effect Bottom-Up   Chapter 14 Speed             14.1 Focusing on Computer Science             14.2 What Makes Programs Fast?                 14.2.1 What Computers Really Understand                 14.2.2 Compilers and Interpreters                 14.2.3 What Limits Computer Speed?                 14.2.4 Making Searching Faster                 14.2.5 Algorithms That Never Finish or Can’t Be Written                 14.2.6 Why Is Photoshop Faster Than JES?             14.3 What Makes a Computer Fast?                 14.3.1 Clock Rates and Actual Computation                 14.3.2 Storage: What Makes a Computer Slow?                 14.3.3 Display   Chapter 15 Functional Programming             15.1 Using Functions to Make Programming Easier             15.2 Functional Programming with Map and Reduce             15.3 Functional Programming for Media                 15.3.1 Media Manipulation without Changing State             15.4 Recursion: A Powerful Idea                 15.4.1 Recursive Directory Traversals                 15.4.2 Recursive Media Functions   Chapter 16 Object-Oriented Programming             16.1 History             16.2 WorkingWith Turtles                 16.2.1 Classes and Objects                 16.2.2 Creating Objects                 16.2.3 Sending Messages to Objects                 16.2.4 Objects Control Their State                 16.2.5 Other Turtle Functions             16.3 Teaching Turtles New Tricks             16.4 An Object-Oriented Slide Show                 16.4.1 Joe the Box                 16.4.2 Object-Oriented Media                 16.4.3 Why Objects?   APPENDICES   A Quick Reference to Python             A.1 Variables             A.2 Function Creation             A.3 Loops and Conditionals             A.4 Operators and Representation Functions             A.5 Numeric Functions             A.6 Sequence Operations             A.7 String Escapes             A.8 Useful String Methods             A.9 Files             A.10 Lists             A.11 Dictionaries, Hash Tables, or Associative Arrays             A.12 External Modules             A.13 Classes             A.14 Functional Methods   Bibliography