When you write software you need to be at the top of your game. Great programmers practice to keep their skills sharp. Get sharp and stay sharp with more than fifty practice exercises rooted in realworld scenarios. If youre a new programmer these challenges will help you learn what you need to break into the field and if youre a seasoned pro you can use these exercises to learn that hot new language for your next gig. One of the best ways to learn a programming language is to use it to solve problems. Thats what this book is all about. Instead of questions rooted in theory this book presents problems youll encounter in everyday software development. These problems are designed for people learning their first programming language and they also provide a learning path for experienced developers to learn a new language quickly. Start with simple input and output programs. Do some currency conversion and figure out how many months it takes to pay off a credit card. Calculate blood alcohol content and determine if its safe to drive. Replace words in files and filter records and use web services to display the weather store data and show how many people are in space right now. At the end youll tackle a few larger programs that will help you bring everything together. Each problem includes constraints and challenges to push you further but its up to you to come up with the solutions. And next year when you want to learn a new programming language or style of programming perhaps OOP vs. functional you can work through this book again using new approaches to solve familiar problems. What You Need You need access to a computer a programming language reference and the programming language you want to use.