Highly Recommended by a CS Educator!

Home » Microsoft® XNA® Game Studio 4.0: Learn Programming Now!

Innovative Educator @ 2011-03-23

Microsoft® XNA® Game Studio 4.0: Learn Programming Now!

$23.99
I am a high school computer science teacher who has written curriculum at the district, state, and national level. I have been teaching XNA for four years and have bought multiple XNA books. This book excels in teaching novice programmers the basics of programming within the context of creating video games. Teaching beginning programming in the context of video games is a national trend and exists at some of the top computer science programs in the country (Carnegie Mellon, UC Berkeley, GIT, etc.)
I would suggest this book for students who have:
- never programmed before
- never programmed in an object-oriented language
- are coming from an Intro to Java course and want to learn game programming

This book is not for the expert programmer who just wants to apply their craft to creating video games. As such, this is not for the seasoned developer and was not meant for them in the first place.

Rob Miles is funny and the reading level is spot on for secondary level students. There is a whole curriculum supporting the book available from Microsoft's Faculty Education Center, along with tutorial videos. One of the best features is the advice from "The Great Programmer".

The reason why some negative reviewers feel the way they do is because they are not computer science educators and do not understand the context for which this book is written.