How to Design Programs: An Introduction to Programming and Computing -- teacher guide access

Question

Hello --

I'm a biologist switching careers, and trying to learn programming as a result. I stumbled upon the aforementioned book on Amazon, which jived with my liberal arts background.

Despite my great satisfaction with the didactic approach, I was frustrated to see that the answers to the exercises are restricted to teachers only. As I am pursuing this endeavor on my own, this restriction dramatically cripples the value of this book.

My request to the author's website for access to the answers has not been answered, and I would desperately like to continue with this book.

Anyone have any experience dealing with the book's website, or at the very least a torrent of the answers? Otherwise, I suspect I will be relegated to using JavaScript for everything!

Thanks!

Answer 1

Since HtDP is a textbook that can be used in schools or colleges,
IMO it's OK that not everyone can find the solutions to the exercises.

(I have copy of the book but I didn't try to acquire a password)

Answer 2

You should hang out with some other folks working through HtDP either here or directly on the PLT discussion list here.

Answer 3

I'm one of the people who manage access to these solutions. The answers that you've got here so far are good advice: we're limiting solution access to teachers or otherwise the value of the book as a resource for teachers will go down considerably. In fact, there are students in HtDP-based courses that try to get access to the solutions from time to time.

But there are plenty of resources you can use instead: the study group that grettke mentioned is one place, and there is also the PLT mailing list where you can ask questions (all of the book's authors are there too, and they do help people). Feel free to post there, or contact me off-line ([email protected]) if you have more questions.

Answer 4

I was going to post this as a comment, but I feel a diatribe coming on, which may not fit in a comment:

Why are the solutions not available to all? There is as I see it only one possible answer:

• to make it easy for teachers to set the same tests year after year without having to think about anything or prepare new materials

Now as an ex-teacher myself (University of London, Middlesex University, The Instruction Set) I can see the advantage in this - I love being lazy. But to to the student it is a huge loss. Why should I not be able to check my answers against known correct answers? Or get ideas from them? Or contribute to them - surely this is something we want to encourage?

The idea of private knowledge is a destructive one, and one I'm suprised to find being encouraged by users of an open source tool.