Stories by Level

Update: Jeremy Kubica's third book of humorous explanations of computer science, The CS Detective, is now available!


Computational Fairy Tales includes over 70 stories that are written for a variety of audiences, from someone with absolutely no programming experience to people with significant computer science backgrounds.  Below is an attempt to categorize the stories by level.  Feedback and suggestions welcome.  And, of course, all stories are suitable for people that have a significant programming background and happen to like the stories.

Also see the Stories by Topic.

Beginner:  Focuses on general concepts (e.g., very high level algorithms) and simple programming concepts.  Good for people without significant (or any) programming experience, including both: people just learning to program and people with no interest in programming but who want to know the concepts.  

Intermediate: Algorithms, data structures, and practical programming techniques.  Concepts generally covered the second half of an introductory CS course and in an intro to algorithms course.  Good for people who have some experience programming.

Advanced: Advanced algorithms, pointers, and computational theory.  These are topics more commonly found in algorithms courses.  Good for people who have been programming for a while or have taken some computer science courses.


Really? Completely random topics.  The target audience here is people who have been studying computer science for a while.