Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Head First Books: Far and Away the Best Computer Books

I was asked by a friend, whose son is in a school district that has no computer courses, what books I would recommend to learn programming.  Fortunately, this is a very easy question to answer.  Far and away, IMHO, the best written computer books are by Head First books.

These books are written by experts who are able to take very complicated topics and speak to them in a very clear, understandable and sometimes humorous manner.  Please do not confused these books with the "Dummy" or "Idiot" series of books.  Nothing against those books, but the Head First books are absolutely head and shoulders above any other series of books for the depth and breadth of their line up of computer books.  

What these books do a great job of is discussing metacognition at the beginning (thinking about thinking) and giving the reader concrete ways to learn the information and to remember what you have learned.  These Head First books go to 11 :-)