I would love to hear your thoughts on my recent book. I had no desire to write yet another “Programming in X” text, and in fact decry the tendency of introductions to focus on a specific language and its features rather than the synthetic skill of programming. Somewhat cheekily, I wrote in the Preface:

    In elementary physics, one doesn't start learning mechanics by studying one or another brand of springs and pulleys; rather, one learns Newton's Laws and how to apply them in arbitrary situations. Similarly, in this book, I eschew the study of any particular brand of programming language, opting instead to focus on fundamental laws formulated as rules of program composition.

I ended up with Principled Programming: Introduction to Coding in Any Imperative Language https://www.cs.cornell.edu/info/people/tt/Principled_Program... The concepts I bring to the fore in lieu of language details include: specifications and their implementations, top-down programming and stepwise refinement, program state and state transitions, preconditions and postconditions, loop and data invariants, termination, practical programming precepts, and simple patterns.

Thanking you in advance.

I'd like to follow this suggestion, but can't figure out how to specify the link in a text submission, which seems to be forbidden. Is it just a line of its own in the text? E.g.,

https://www.cs.cornell.edu/info/people/tt/Principled_Program...

You don’t make a test submission, you make a link submission and add a comment.

Sorry to be so dense, but I see multiple interpretations of your advice, and would appreciate your clarification so that I can get it right in one shot:

(1) In the submission DB, put my book's link in the URL field, and leave the text field blank. Then, after the submission has been made, return to it by clicking discuss, and add my text as a comment (say, including the parenthetical URL).

(2) In the submission DB, put my book's link in the URL field, and put my text in the text field. In this case, is the text field in the submission DB considered to be a comment (in which case I can include the parenthetical URL) or is the text field in the DB considered to be plain text (in which case a URL will not turn into a clickable link, but at least my title will be hot)?

You remarked that people get burned by this all the time. Perhaps the authorities that be might consider providing better instructions for HN novices like me.

(1)