About the second edition

This is the second edition of this book. It tries to stick with what worked well the first time around, and to improve the parts that were not as smooth as they could have been.

We maintain the overall style of the book: the hands-on presentation of programming projects, the practical work interspersed with discussion and explanation, and the general tone. This has worked very well.

However, there were points in the first edition where readers found progression challenging when the pace picked up in the second half of the book. We have now added two chapters to introduce some concepts more slowly and gradually, and to provide more practice with the most difficult concepts. We have also added a significant amount of exercises to each chapter to provide much more practice and reinforcement of the concepts covered. This includes the presentation and use of many more practice scenarios.

We have also added a chapter about programming Greenfoot with the Microsoft Kinect. While not every reader can make use of this (because it requires having the hardware available), the level of enthusiasm and excitement that these examples have generated when we presented them in workshops justify, in our view, inclusion here. There is so much potential.

And, of course, the book has been updated to make use of new features of more recent versions of the Greenfoot software. We have adapted Greenfoot to make some popular tasks possible or easier, and to illustrate some concepts better. The book incorporates this in the new scenarios.

Overall, we hope that the added material serves to make your path through the maze that is the learning of programming even more smooth, and more interesting.