Good but has the "great leap" flaw of all programming books

By "great leap" flaw I mean that in every programming book supposedly aimed at non-programmers I've seen, there comes a point where the author, who previously has reasonably explained each new concept, makes a great leap into the unknown. In this book, the great leap comes in Chapter 9 "Storing Information with Arrays." In an explanation of some lines in the first (unneccessarily complicated) array the author has this to say: "The numeric values of the alphabet range from 65 for 'A' to 90 for 'Z.'" The author never bothers to explain why the hell this is so: either the author supposes that the reader knows just why it is that A has been given a value of 65, or expects the reader to simply accept it without question. Very irritating. Is a brief explanation of character sets too much to ask?

I should point out that this book is better than most. Typically the great leap occurs in the 3rd chapter, as it did in the Peachpit Press Quick Start Guide to JavaScript.

Other Reviews

• Java Programming in 24hours
• The book was ok
• Another failed teacher
• Full of beans
• Good but has the "great leap" flaw of all programming books