DAF Book Review

Hi guys, this is my first post. Copied from my Twitter review:

Finished my first Dart book by Jonathan Sande (@Suragch1) and the Kodeco team (@kodecodev) Three highlights and one suggestion:

1.) Humor

Most programming books I’ve read either don’t have much of it or try too hard. Here it came naturally and had a good amount

2.) Easy to read

It felt less like a textbook and more like Jonathan was teaching you Dart for fun in his free time. Definitely a more relaxed vibe than other CS books

3.) Structure

They did a good job at sizing the chapters with just enough content to digest easily. The layout was designed equally as well — building on previous chapters was so smooth that it was unnoticeable

// Suggestion

Double the amount of exercises and challenges. They did help reinforce what we learned, but to me it wasn’t quite enough. I found myself flipping back to earlier chapters to brush up more often than with other programming books

Overall, great intro to Dart. And probably the best one out there right now

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Welcome to the Forums @gerussi !

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Thank you for posting here too in addition to Twitter. When we do book updates, we check the forums for these kinds of comments.

I’m glad you enjoyed the book and I agree with your idea to add more exercises and challenges. If you have any specific ideas for challenges or specific chapters that need them (whether in this book or future books you read), please write thoughts here in the forums. Sometimes at the end of a chapter I’m racking my brain for a good challenge but can’t come up with many ideas.

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Some that come to mind are: 1) simple electronic devices such as vending machines, and 2) basic calculations such as finding the dimenions of a pool and the surrounding garden so you know how much material to buy and how much it will cost.

Also, when there are more challenges at the end of the chapter, it’s nice when the first few are similar to the examples that we followed along in the chapter. That way by the time we get to the final challenge(s) that are unlike the example code, it will be easier to do on our own without flipping back to brush up, making it more fun and rewarding.

That being said, the exercises and challenges in the book right now are good. They’re definitely helping.

edit: I hope that made sense.

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