A Data-Centric Introduction to Computing

This book is an introduction to computer science. It will teach you to program, and do so in ways that are of practical value and importance. However, it will also go beyond programming to computer science, a rich, deep, fascinating, and beautiful intellectual discipline. You will learn many useful things that you can apply right away, but we will also show you some of what lies beneath and beyond.

Most of all, it will give you ways of thinking about solving problems using computation. Some of these ways are technical methods, such as working from data and examples to construct solutions to problems. Others are scientific methods, such as ways of making sure that programs are reliable and do what they claim. Finally, some are social, thinking about the impacts that programs have on people.

This book proposes a new perspective on structuring computing curricula, which we call data centricity - it views a data-centric curriculum as data centric = data science + data structures