Talk:The Science of Programming

This book title is already taken by a much better and still relevant text.

Sway or General Programming
I think this book is wrongly titled. I know that it is just now coming to life but for most of the content I've looked into it addresses more the Sway programming language than the topic the title suggests. One could argue that Sway may be a good choice as any to introduce the topic, but I don't see how using a "obscure" language is in any way better than using the standard approach and give classic examples of the programming paradigms with a multitude of references to existing and well known languages, for most part pseudocode would suffice and make it easier for a non programmer to understand the content and examples, without being side tracked in introducing a single language. In my opinion the book as it is should be transformed in a introduction/complete manual to Sway programming, and this generalist title dropped as it is somewhat misleading. --Panic (talk) 16:54, 16 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't see how this title is any more "wrong" than the title of the hardback book "How to Think Like a Computer Scientist", by Allen B. Downey et al, which is apparently a sneaky way to get people to learn Python. --DavidCary (talk) 03:06, 10 March 2009 (UTC)


 * There are several versions of that book for other languages (not only Python) the complete title is "Python for Software Design: How to Think Like a Computer Scientist" or "How to Think Like a Computer Scientist: Learning with Python" I think it depends on the edition. --Panic (talk) 03:43, 10 March 2009 (UTC)


 * OK, so how about we agree that this book has the complete title "The Science of Programming: with the Sway programming language"?
 * Can we verbally agree that is the complete name and post it prominately on this page, and still use the short name "The Science of Programming" as the name for Naming policy page naming purposes, leaving off the subtitle? I hear that mw:Extension:AllBooks has a recommendation for how to handle books with subtitles. --DavidCary (talk) 00:43, 17 March 2009 (UTC)


 * "We" don't "need" to agree with anything, I haven't renamed the book, I'm not an editor of it nor am I championing a name change. I was merely pointing out (I noticed the work when I was tinkering with the categories) that the title raises several issues a) too broad b) uses exclusively a generally unknown language (not even on Wikipedia, not that it should be a requirement) and recently c) the author (the editor that contributed most of the content) blanked the toc page pointing to a new location (change that was reverted by myself), but the author hasn't posted an announcement as I indicated as the optimal solution so I see the future evolution of the work as being at risk.
 * Disregarding c) we are left with points a) and b) that on my view reduce the usefulness of the work, mostly because of the expectations the general title implies. I would never the less prefer a new title, your proposal seems reasonable and more clear, even if we could and should comply with the normal use of names/namespaces of the project (this is not an attempt to rehash your stated  dislike to the status quo on that topic) but placing it in a Sway namespace would be optimal if the colons are to be used, as in Sway:The Science of Programming (but creating a namespace for only a book on the language doesn't seem useful), so a better alternative would be Sway, the Science of Programming or Sway - The Science of Programming, something on those lines. If you do intend in making a point on the use of colon you should raise the issue on the discussion about book names/namespaces, if not you will probably be creating even more confusion on the subject.  --Panic (talk) 01:18, 17 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Panic, I appreciate that you were the first one to use and mention the colon on this talk page, and the first one to mention a book name with a colon in it. Thank you.
 * Since you brought up "need", I agree that you don't "need" to agree with me.
 * I'm going to pretend that you agree with me and Downey's publishers that "How to Think Like a Computer Scientist" is an adequate short name for Downey's book.
 * I'm going to pretend that you agree with me that the colon-free short name "The Science of Programming" is an adequate short name for this book, and we can continue using that for page names, at least until we have some other wikibook that actually does cover all of programming as a science.
 * I agree that -- much like Downey's book -- "The Science of Programming" sounds like it covers more than this really does, and so I think the first page of this book should be very, very clear on what this book actually does cover. Perhaps this first page should directly link to other wikibooks that talk more about programming in general, as a science. --DavidCary (talk) 18:42, 16 June 2009 (UTC)


 * You are equating agreement with non-obstruction :), not the same but with the same result (I take this issue very seriously and that was also the point I was making above when referring to the need for agreement), since there is a generalized confusion on the issue when referring to consensus and consensus decisions on this project. In any case I'm not blocking the present solution and was only proposing an alternative to the utilization of the colon convention, so to make it clearer, hence the proposals as "a better alternative would be Sway, the Science of Programming or Sway - The Science of Programming"... --Panic (talk) 00:03, 17 June 2009 (UTC)