Another C# textbook

www.taxesforcatses.com has a free Learning Computer Programming section. It’s really just a 1st year textbook, but it’s written using Unity and C# scripts.

It's not a Unity How-To. It’s really for someone thinking “so scripting is computer programming. OK, where do I learn that?” I was never able to recommend an overall general-purpose programming guide before.

 

Just out of curiosity I had a quick look. Looks like you have invested a lot of time and effort in writing a programming "textbook". Very nice of you! Let's hope it get's read and appreciated. ( I'm not gonna read it, because I think I have enough knowledge on the subjects presented. ) PDFs are very readable but the HTMLs could definitely use a bit more styling to be easier on the eyes. I think you could also improve the PDFs and the HTMLs by adding more pictures. Something that explains a scripting concept or inspires to fantasise about the power of a scripting concept. Might simple be screenshots or silly metaphors for scripting concepts. But that's just my humble opinion. Congrats with finishing your own "Intro to Computer programming" using Unity and C#, there must be a big interest in this type of book.

 

Thanks for checking the link works. I've had so many pages in the past that I could see fine, but no one else could.

Funny about metaphors. I used to have bare-bones notes, then I'd explain with crazy examples in person. I figured I'd just write them all down -- how a function call was giving your pet bunny to my secretary John, while I worked in the the back. But it just didn't work as well written -- they seemed forced and condescending on paper. I think in person it's all clearly a "see if this helps you get it" metaphor, with the voice and the dancing. I'm acting like and that doesn't come across as well written.

I do have an ASCII picture of an if-else as a flow chart, in part 3.

I didn't think anyone would look at the htmls, so thanks for that. I should emphasize those nicer pdf links more. It's actually written in LaTeX, which makes really nice-looking pdfs out of anything. The html's were quickly dashed-off using htLatex. I think that make a dot-css I could tweak.

 

Thank you Always great to find more resources to improve on my C# understanding!

 

Hey, I really want to thank you for your hard work and time invested in this resource. I really appreciate your writing style actually. It makes the material a lot more engaging because I feel like your having a conversation with me. Thanks for this resource, and I'll definitely use this to gain a better understanding of C#!

 

Nice of you to say. I consider the writing style to be standard "2nd-person textbook," but the real secret is to edit, a lot. I even done some rewrites since posting it. So if you get a chance, add any notes you think of either here or on the barely working Comment section on that site (it takes Anonymous comments. It has big fields for name, email ... but those just came with the package and aren't needed.)

I'm not paying you, so worry about writing anything big. Figuring out what you were thinking from a sentence or two is my problem. And there's no moral obligation - just if you happen to see something and have a few minutes. And I've gotten many, many, many comments from students over the years, of all sorts, so don't worry I might take it as an insult or mock it. Anything like "the example in XX seemed extra confusing / too easy," or typos/wrong-code, or "section YY repeats a lot of stuff you write in XX," or "the example with the tiger in ZZ seemed kind of stupid. The example was fine, but lose the tiger." Anything like that would be helpful.

 

No problem, Ive been organizing resources for learning C# and I have your textbook saved on my Trello board. In addition, I will definitely think about sending comments, I still need to go through and read chapters, but I love the writing style especially because many textbooks in general are often too dull for me to take the time to read through. Moreover, thank you for taking the time to write that post because I always learn best when I am free to interact with the material and freely ask questions.

In addition, do you have any other learning resources or Unity courses that you teach?

Thanks again,
from a hobbyist just getting into C# and Unity 3D

 

There's just what you see on the site. My teaching has only ever been at a regular in-person school, which is why I make no attempt to monetize this stuff (well, among other reasons.)

But for other resources, I think that learning to code makes a lot of other things unnecessary. When you know arrays, for example, how to do a lot of things is obvious. And the Unity coding docs are very good, once you know how to read function headings and things like that.

 

Now has sections on Inheritance, Recursion, Big-O, using function pointers and linked lists (after everything else.)

Also now has detailed (chapter, section and sub-section,) clickable tables of contents: in a single large pdf, and an html table of contents (made by htlatex.)

 

Part I (up to loops and arrays, first 36 chapters) rewritten, fixed grammar and odd wordings, clean/changed awkward examples, reworked/shortened commentary. Redid array section as Lists (which are just better) and moved Arrays nearer the end.

 

Part-I, first 36 chapters, once again rewritten. Too long explanations cut/shortened, a few more examples added, misc code errors fixed, sentence fragments added by first re-edit have been removed. HTML links to part 2 have been fixed (the better PDF links have always been fine).