Computer Science Programming Basics with Ruby

This book is intended as a text for an "Introduction to Computer Science" course for non-majors. That is, this book is intended for "the rest of the world"; namely "every can program". No specific pre-requisites at the college level are needed. However, basic high school level mathematics knowledge is assumed. Our approach minimizes the need to harp on the illustrative programming language details in favor of an immediate introduction to core computer science topics. User interface issues are ignored as these have little if anything to do with the foundations of Computer Science. We use a very practical programming language (Ruby) as the foundation and provide a variety of detailed examples using the language that illustrate the concepts being taught.

Ophir Frieder holds the Robert L. McDevitt, K.S.G., K.C.H.S. and Catherine H. McDevitt L.C.H.S. Chair in Computer Science and Information Processing and is Chair of the Department of Computer Science at Georgetown University. He is also Professor of Biostatistics, Bioinformatics and Biomathematics in the Georgetown University Medical Center. He is a Fellow of the AAAS, ACM, and IEEE. Gideon Frieder is the former Dean of Engineering and currently A. James Clark Professor Emeritus of Engineering and Applied Science in the School of Engineering of George Washington University. Author of various academic publications in areas of Physics, Logic, medical applications and computer design, his background includes industrial and academic development of sophisticated projects such as complex systems (in the Israeli DoD), an innovative universal emulator/computer used, among other applications, in the certification of the Trident Submarine firing systems (in the US, via industrial corporations) and the design of a solar car that won the first place in the world in the 1995 Word Solar Challenge in Japan. ( George Washington University). In all cases, the development was from the "glean in the eye" phase, through basic research followed by development, design, certification and prototype. Dr. David Grossman is Associate Professor of Computer Science and the Director of the Information Retrieval Laboratory at the Illinois Institute of Technology. He was a Principal Investigator on several NSF grants that solely focused on improving the computer science undergraduate curriculum. He also chaired, for over 6 six years, the IIT Computer Science Undergraduate Studies Committee and led the department through two successful ABET reviews. He is the primary co-author of the Springer Science and Business Media "Top Selling Title" award book entitled "Information Retrieval: Algorithms and Heuristics". He is a former General Chair and Program Chair of the ACM Conference on Information and Knowledge Management. Previously, he taught courses at the University of Maryland, George Washington University, and George Mason University.