Today, programming has become a required skill in many professions. Traditional forms of programming are useful for just a few people. But a broader notion of programming as conceived by the authors of this text is useful for everyone as it teaches problem-analysis and problem-solving skills without imposing the overhead of traditional programming notations and tools.

The main focus of the text is on the design process that leads the readers from problem statements to well-organized solutions-deemphasizing the study of programming language details, algorithmic minutiae, and specific application domains.

The book exposes the readers to two fundamentally new ideas-program design recipes by categories of problems, and a novel programming environment explicitly designed for beginners. The environment grows with the readers as they master the material in the book until it supports a full-fledged language for the whole spectrum of programming tasks.

The book uses a tiny subset of Scheme programming language to develop programs. (The book is not about programming in Scheme.) The choice of Scheme is natural as beginners can remain focused on the essence of programming and still develop complete programs using just the core of this language.