New Book Proposal Tentative Title
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- Book Contents in Brief: See vision above and table of contents below. Proposed Table Of Contents
- What Makes This Book Unique
- 6 Key Points as to Why Someone Would Want to Purchase This Book
- Competition and Books Available
- TITLE Amazon ranking Strengths Weaknesses
- Manuscript Specifications: 1. Estimated Final Pages: 540 pages (see end of table of contents listing) 2. Estimated Number of Illustrations
- 4. Manuscript to be prepared in
| New Book Proposal
Tentative Title: Introduction to Object-Oriented Programming Using C#: Tentative Subtitle1: An Information Systems Approach Definition of Topic and/or Product with Technology Details and Statistics (Installed User Base, etc.): Today’s market has many programming language/tool alternatives for desktop and web application development. In the recent past, Java drew considerable interest while Visual Basic held on to a strong constituency. However, C# has quickly become the fastest growing programming language, and that trend is expected to continue in the coming years based on reports published by Gartner and DeveloperIQ. While Visual Basic is widely-accepted as an easy language for beginners to learn, many opponents question its potential for complex systems. On the other hand, C++ and Java are favorites for complex application development, but tend to be more challenging for a beginner to learn. Microsoft has either been extremely good at predicting the market or extremely good at driving the market. Either way, its operating systems and languages have driven the PC market since the advent of MS-DOS and Basic-80 in the early 1980’s. That dominance has not diminished much over the years, despite efforts by competitors and the US Justice Department. The Introduction of Visual Studio .NET (VSN) is an effort to continue that aggressive lead by providing a complete suite of programming languages and tools in one package. While there is no definitive statistic for the installed base for VSN, the authors’ educated guess is that it is approximately 3 to 5 million copies. Microsoft has aggressively marketed VSN and has signed numerous student licensing agreements with many major institutions. These agreements allow VSN to be purchased for as little as $10. It is difficult to know how many student copies exist. The low-cost availability of the VSN tool coupled with the abundance of Visual Basic.Net programming textbooks may explain why many academic institutions teach Visual Basic (.NET) in their introductory programming courses. Visual Basic, however, suffers from a reputation of being limited to simple programming tasks, despite the proven ability of proficient VB programmers to develop complex, enterprise-based applications. Nonetheless, there are many computing curricula that opt to use C++ or Java in their programming courses. C# has been touted by Microsoft as a language that combines the elegance of C++ with the productivity enhancements offered by Visual Basic, resulting in significant productivity enhancements for the developer building complex software applications. Further, the similarities of C# to Java make it easier for a student to move from C# to Java. The entire .NET paradigm of a single integrated development environment (IDE) for all of its languages and tools makes it very difficult for any would-be competitor to duplicate the same toolset. The changes in the IDE also are designed to make web-based development that much easier. Indeed, the fact that a single IDE supports not only C#, but also Visual Basic, C++, and ASP provides a “cradle-to-grave, one-stop-shopping” set of tools for the programmer. All of these facts suggest academe has motivation to move from Visual Basic and Java to C# in programming curricula. Vision of the Book: The book is designed to be an introductory computer programming text for Information Systems, Information Technology and other application-oriented curricula. While thousands of introductory programming texts exist, we have found none that combine the three elements that account for the uniqueness of our book:
The authors believe in the “learning by doing” approach, so realistic, business-oriented examples will be used throughout the text to illustrate concepts and how to apply them. Related explanations will help students understand why things work as they do. Where applicable, chapters will be divided into two sections. The first section will cover the fundamentals of that chapter’s subject. The second section will delve deep into the subject area for students and instructors who wish to learn more detailed information. For example, the first section in the chapter on persistence using files will cover simple, tab-delimited text files, and the second section will cover binary, random-access files. Similarly, the first section in the chapter on iterations (i.e. looping) will contain the familiar while and for next constructs, and the second section will cover nested loops. We believe this two-part chapter approach has several benefits. It shortens the length of the topics into more easily digestible portions. It allows the reader a chance to understand the general concepts before delving into the gritty details. More importantly, it gives course instructors flexibility in how to use the text to best fit the course audience. For example, one instructor may choose to use only the first section of each chapter, while another instructor may choose to use the first section of some chapters and both sections of others. The proposed book will apply OOP techniques in a consistent fashion throughout the text. This approach begins with a simple, yet (we believe) effective, introduction to the fundamental concepts of OOP. The initial introduction stresses the concept of objects while the topics of encapsulation, polymorphism, and inheritance are discussed later in the text. Because we envision this as serving a one semester introductory course, we think the emphasis should be on the encapsulation aspects of OOP (i.e., “data hiding” as it applies to object properties and methods). This emphasis enables us: 1) to provide the novice programmer with the appropriate mindset necessary to successfully use OOP techniques and 2) to “convert” the student with structured programming experience to the OOP paradigm. Students will have the opportunity to apply learned concepts by completing end-of-chapter programming exercises. Sidebars will also be used where appropriate to discuss 1) tips, 2) techniques, and 3) common programming mistakes. Different icons will be used to signal which type of sidebar is being presented. This is a common (and useful) teaching technique used in many programming texts. After completing the book, the student should be able to both explain OOP concepts as well as develop practical/useful programs written in C#. Further, the student should feel confident if moving to an advanced course. We leave it to the publisher to determine whether, for marketing purposes, a code examples CD or a supplemental website are needed. At least one of the authors is willing to negotiate with the publisher to provide data for the website. The authors do agree that the website may be a more cost-effective way to update the code or communicate errata if that is deemed necessary. Development of additional teaching materials may also be negotiated separately with any of the authors, if desired. Book Contents in Brief: See vision above and table of contents below. Proposed Table Of Contents:
While this may seem ambitious, we’ve used this technique in the classroom and it works. Further, it gives us a base from which to expand the detail and complexity while still providing a framework for writing a “real” program.
i. Introduce the object.property and object.method notation. ii. String concatenation
a. Introduce import keyword used in a math example. b. Operator, hierarchy, precedence, parentheses
a. Truth tables b. if-else, switch, ternary operator c. Data validation and error handling d. MessageBox
b. OpenFileDialog & SaveFileDialog c. Binary files d. Using the printer object and redirecting output
Appendix A – Frequently Used User Interface Objects Appendix B – Speed Coding Tips and Tricks Appendix C – C# Coding Styles and Guidelines Appendix D – Deployment Page Count: There are so many factors that can impact the page count (e.g., usage of white space, font, tables and figures, etc.) that it is difficult to estimate this. However, from the point of view of student reading assignments, we prefer to keep each chapter page count between 23-39 pages and expect the appendices to be between 20-30 pages. This implies approximately 320-540 pages for the entire text. Audience Profile: This will be used by instructors who teach introductory computer programming courses in Information Systems, Information Technology and other application-oriented curricula who are looking for an easy-to-use alternative to Visual Basic, C++, or Java. Primary audience: College students in an introductory computer-programming course Secondary audience: High school students or anyone wishing to learn C# as a first or subsequent object-oriented programming language Ideal Reader: The ideal reader for this book would be an undergraduate student with no prior computer programming experience in an Information Systems, Information Technology and other application-oriented curricula. What Makes This Book Unique: There are many C# books on the market but none are college textbooks that combine the three elements that account for the uniqueness of our book. First, most of the existing books are targeted toward experienced, professional programmers who simple wish to learn the syntax of C#. These titles will tend to confuse the novice programmer. Second, a few are designed for beginners, but are targeted toward computer science curricula and focus on language syntax and how the language and compiler works, rather than how to use it to solve business-related problems. And third, we feel our approach of integrating OOP throughout the book and abundant, illustrative examples will give the novice learner a more complete understanding of OOP than what is possible with most of the competing titles. Additionally we hope to develop our text using the “Whidbey” release of Visual Studio .NET. Whidbey is the code name for the current alpha release of Visual Studio that is scheduled to be released late 2004. Although information about Whidbey is sketchy due to its newness, there are numerous enhancements to most elements of Visual Studio. Our text will concentrate on the enhancements that pertain to C#. 6 Key Points as to Why Someone Would Want to Purchase This Book: Someone would purchase the proposed text for one, some or all of the reasons below:
Competition and Books Available: Which books currently available are your closest competitor’s? How will your book be different/better? Please list the title, ISBN, price, page count, media, and overall impression for each book. Below we are listing many of the C# books we have found. Note that our research indicates none of the book titles listed below appear to be college textbooks with relevant teaching materials.
Manuscript Specifications: 1. Estimated Final Pages: 540 pages (see end of table of contents listing) 2. Estimated Number of Illustrations: We are firm believers in the picture-is-worth-a-thousand-words paradigm and the importance of white space in selling a book. We estimate at least 5 to 15 illustrations per chapter/appendix, or between 65 and 200 illustrations (i.e., figures and screen shots) plus tables. 3. Art Program Prep Graphic tools embedded within Word (WordArt, Org Chart, tables, …) Paint Shop Pro Visio Photo Editor 4. Manuscript to be prepared in: Microsoft Word Directory: ~rbarger ~rbarger -> Chapter Philosophic Belief Systems Introduction ~rbarger -> Book Proposal to Cambridge University Press January 2007 Author: Robert Dunne Affiliation Download 54.43 Kb. Share with your friends:
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