Our civilization runs on software. Software is an area of unsurpassed diversity and opportunities for interesting, socially useful, and profi table work. When you approach software, do it in a principled and serious manner: you want to be part of the solution, not add to the problems.

We are obviously in awe of the range of software that permeates our technological civilization. Not all applications of software do good, of course, but that is another story. Here we wanted to emphasize how pervasive software is and how much of what we rely on in our daily lives depends on software. It was all written by people like us. All the scientists, mathematicians, engineers, programmers, etc. who built the software briefly mentioned here started like you are starting.

Now, let’s get back to the down-to-earth business of learning the technical skills needed to program. If you start wondering if it is worth all your hard work (most thoughtful people wonder about that sometime), come back and reread this chapter, the Preface, and bits of Chapter 0 (“Notes to the Reader”). If you start wondering if you can handle it all, remember that millions have succeeded in becoming competent programmers, designers, software engineers, etc. You can, too.