(1) Helps get you set up with your own environment.
Pine helps you quickly and easily set up Ruby, Notepad++, and works you through the terminal. I love this setup because I am actually writing programs and I have an open ended workspace on which I can practice. This is one of the drawbacks to the infrastructure of Code Academy, you never get your own workspace and you rarely have an opportunity to practice outside of their lessons. If you play around with the code, the lesson will always return a "right, move on!" or "wrong, try again" message which is annoying if you are trying to play with the code.
(2) Explanations!
If you have worked through any coding at all, these first chapters are going to go by really quickly unless you just decide to skip them. However, I decided to read them closely and in doing so gained a deeper understanding of what was going on in the language. Pine does not over explain or speak in too much jargon, but he does explain the underlying concepts which is so useful to the beginner. Pine also has an upbeat and can do attitude throughout the book and it helps to disarm some of the anxiety of the beginning programmer.
(3) Excercises
This is the best part by far. Pine integrates exercises into the chapters and has two answer sets at the end explaining both how you might do them based on what you know and how he might do them based on his experience and knowledge. These exercises are real challenges and they have you writing programs throughout. It gets you practicing in the editor and practicing running and double checking your programs as you go. Some of these early exercises seemed simple, but presented me with a real challenge. I feel like I have made so much more progress just in designing my own simple programs rather than being guided through more complex projects.
That said, I am only on chapter 6, and some of the reviews on Amazon speak to an issue where Pine begins to jump forward while failing to provide some of the explanation I just praised him for. I will post a full review of the book when I finish it up, hopefully in a day or two.
Total hours into Programming: 46 (5 yesterday)
Chris Pine's Learn to Program (Finished with Chapter 5)
Progress on Hartl's Tutorial Ready to start Chapter 3!
Code Academy Points: 461
Code Academy Badges: 51
Code Academy Skills Finished: 2 (Make a Website, Ruby)
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