LITMAN BOOKS
A LIBRARY OF
COMPUTER SCIENCE
TEXTBOOKS.
DR. MICHAEL LITMAN, Ph.D.
Master Computer Scientist
Project-based textbooks for students who want to actually program by the time they're done — not just talk about programming. Each book is built on the same thesis: the skill lives in your hands, and the only way it gets there is reps.
The Shelf
CODING 1
The Sport of Programming
Programming is a sport.
A 16-week project-based introduction to programming. C++ to Java, fourteen apologetics-themed projects, no prior coding required.
CODING 2
The Architect's Game
AI can write the lines. You write the system.
A 16-week sequel to Coding 1. Eight weeks sharpening the foundational engineering skills AI cannot replace. Eight more weeks learning to direct AI as a senior partner — the kind of pair programming a trained computer scientist can actually trust.
CODING 3
The AI-Aware Software Architect
AI builds what you specify. You decide what is worth building — and what it will cost.
A 16-week sequel to Coding 2. Eight weeks on the data structures and concurrency that teach you the true cost of every choice. Eight more building real internet-aware systems — servers, databases, and front ends — choosing the right tool for the job and directing agentic AI to do alone what once took a team.
SYSTEM ADMINISTRATION AND MAINTENANCE
Administering the AI-Era Enterprise
AI is now both your most powerful tool and your most demanding workload. The administrator wields the one and governs the other — without surrendering the judgment that keeps the system trustworthy.
A 16-week graduate course in enterprise system administration for the AI era. Eight weeks on the foundations — the role, the operating system, identity, storage, networks, virtualization, containers, and automation — each taught with AI woven through as both a tool you direct and a workload you must run. Eight more on operating, defending, and governing at scale: observability, security operations, backup and continuity, the cloud, DevOps/SRE, lifecycle, autonomous operations, and a capstone in which you architect the AI-native enterprise of 2030.
COMPUTER SCIENCE RESEARCH PRACTICUM
Producing the Foundation of a Publishable Paper
A practicum is the first half of a thesis. You will not study research from a distance — you will do it, and walk out holding the foundation of a publishable paper: a real problem, a literature review, a reproducible design, measured results, a drafted paper, and a road to a venue.
A 16-week, master's-level research practicum in applied computer science and AI. Instead of sixteen weeks of method lectures ending in a proposal, you produce the foundation of a publishable paper: a defined problem, a systematic literature review, a reproducible experimental design, preliminary results, a conference-style draft, and a publication roadmap. You choose a domain — AI, security, networking, software engineering, databases, HCI, graphics, AR/VR, robotics, cloud, HPC, architecture, or data science — and investigate how modern AI advances it.
THE AI-POWERED PROFESSIONAL
Judgment, Fluency, and Verified Trust in the Age of AI
AI is the most powerful professional tool of your lifetime — and the one that most rewards judgment. The professional who thrives is not the one who uses AI the most, but the one who knows when to use it, which tool to reach for, and how to verify what it gives back — keeping human judgment where the stakes are real.
A 16-week AI-literacy course for working professionals — non-technical, hands-on, and built for judgment over hype. Eight weeks to understand the landscape, the models, and how to choose and prompt them; eight more to create with multimodal tools, run AI privately, build a prompt library, delegate to agents, use it responsibly, and redesign your own work around it. No coding required. Every week is a real lab you can do on a free account.
THE AI-POWERED PROFESSIONAL — CUW EDITION
Judgment, Fluency, and Verified Trust in the Age of AI — built around Concordia's BoodleBox
AI is the most powerful professional tool of your lifetime — and the one that most rewards judgment. The professional who thrives is not the one who uses AI the most, but the one who knows when to use it, which tool to reach for, and how to verify what it gives back — keeping human judgment where the stakes are real.
A 16-week AI-literacy course for working professionals — non-technical, hands-on, and built for judgment over hype. Eight weeks to understand the landscape, the models, and how to choose and prompt them; eight more to create with multimodal tools, run AI privately, build a prompt library, delegate to agents, use it responsibly, and redesign your own work around it. No coding required. Every week is a real lab you can do on a free account.
THE AI ADVANTAGE
A Practical Guide to Living Smarter, Safer, and More Confidently
You already learned the smartphone. This is easier — and it can make daily life simpler, safer, and a little more delightful. In six short sessions you will learn to talk to an AI helper, get plain answers to confusing things, write with ease, ask an expert anything, use your camera to see and understand, and spot the scams — all on the iPhone or iPad you already own.
A short, gentle guide for anyone who mastered the smartphone and now wants AI to work for them. Six unhurried 20-minute sessions, each teaching one skill you can use that same day — talking to an AI helper, understanding confusing letters and bills, writing emails and notes, getting expert help with home and hobbies, using your camera to identify and read things, and staying safe from AI scams. You practice right on the page, then try it in one free app on your phone. No jargon, no rush, and nothing you can break.
WISE AS SERPENTS
AI Fluency for the Faithful — Discernment for a Fast-Changing World
"Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves" (Matthew 10:16, ESV). AI is neither a god to fear nor a toy to ignore — it is a powerful, fallible tool loose in a fallen world. In ten short lessons you will learn to use it well, test everything it tells you, spot the deepfakes and scams built with it, and hold fast to the truth — fluent in the technology, anchored in the Word.
A ten-lesson AI-fluency course for the practicing Christian adult. Each lesson takes under thirty minutes: plain teaching, one hands-on practice panel right on the page, one real exercise with a free AI tool, Scripture from the Old and New Testaments, and discussion questions ready for a small group. You will learn what AI really is (and is not), how to use it for daily work and Bible study without outsourcing your soul, and how to stand firm against the deepfakes, scams, and misinformation the same technology powers. Free tools only; nothing to buy.
QUANTUM DISCIPLE MINISTRIES: CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS (LEVEL 1)
An Eight-Week Certification Course — Defending the Faith in an Age of AI, Outrage, and Spin
"But in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect" (1 Peter 3:15, ESV). Truth has not changed, but the battlefield has: feelings now outrank facts, AI and deepfakes forge evidence, Islam makes confident claims about Jesus, and politicians of every party wrap their platforms in the cross. In eight weeks of training — with real practice, real projects, and a real exam — you will be equipped, tested, and commissioned as a beginner apologist for exactly this world.
An eight-week certification course that trains adult Christians to defend the faith in today's world — two hours a week, with interactive practice on every page, a graded project most weeks, an auto-graded Certification Checkpoint at Week 4, and a capstone Defense Portfolio at Week 8. You will learn to answer "that's just your truth," make the manuscript and resurrection case in plain English, respond with gentleness and accuracy to Islam's claims about Jesus, verify claims in a world of deepfakes and AI fakes, navigate science and quantum questions without gimmicks, and keep Christ above the political fray. Free tools only; Canvas-ready; finish and print your Level 1 certificate.
ACCELERATED CODING 1
The Sport of Programming — Eight-Week Online Intensive
Programming is a sport. This is two-a-days.
The full Coding 1 curriculum — C++ to Java, procedural to object-oriented — in eight online weeks. Six consolidated projects, a Week 4 midterm, a Week 8 final, and a book built to be learned alone: every rep ships its expected output.
THE CAPSTONE PROJECT
Sixteen Weeks From Idea to Handoff
A capstone is not a big homework assignment. It is the first project you own end to end — and the first one you have to hand to somebody else. You will wear every hat a software team wears, produce every artifact a real project produces, and finish holding a repository a stranger could clone, run, and take over.
A 16-week senior capstone. You bring the idea; this book brings the process. Roughly 240 hours of work — about 15 a week — carried through the full software development life cycle: inception, requirements, design and specification, planning, construction, verification, documentation, deployment, and handoff. Every week ships a milestone that becomes part of the final deliverable: a GitHub repository with working software, a requirements specification, a technical specification, an honest hours log, architecture decision records, a test suite and defect log, a README that walks a stranger through running it, and a handoff guide that lets the next engineer take the project over. It ends with a 30-minute presentation and a submitted repository link.
ACCELERATED CAPSTONE PROJECT
Eight Weeks From Brief to Handoff
Eight weeks is not enough time to discover what you want to build. It is exactly enough time to build something real — if you decide fast, write the requirements down once, and spend the rest of the term with your hands on the work.
The eight-week, accelerated edition of The Capstone Project. Same professional arc — inception, requirements, design, construction, verification, documentation, deployment, handoff — compressed into eight weeks and roughly 160 hours, about 20 a week. The compression is bought in one place: you do not spend a month hunting for an idea. Week 1 hands you a catalog of twelve pre-scoped project briefs, each with a real problem, a named user, a drafted starter requirement set, an identified hard part, and a technology stack already sized to the budget. You adopt one and adapt it — or bring your own and use a brief as the template — and you are writing requirements on day two instead of week four. By the end of Week 3 your specification is written and a walking skeleton is running in continuous integration. The remaining five weeks are yours to build, test, document, and hand off.
MOBILE COMPUTER ARCHITECTURE
Eight Weeks Inside the Machine in Your Pocket
A desktop architect asks how fast it can go. A mobile architect asks four questions at once — how fast, at what energy, for how long before it throttles, and on which processor. Master those four and the whole strange shape of a phone becomes obvious.
An eight-week graduate course in the architecture of phones, tablets, wearables, and XR headsets — the systems that made specialization, energy, and heat the first-order design constraints of modern computing. You start at the instruction set and the system-on-chip block diagram, work through heterogeneous multicore CPUs, the memory hierarchy that decides most of your performance, and the fleet of accelerators that surrounds the CPU. Then the week that reframes everything: power, battery, and thermals — why a phone benchmarks brilliantly for ninety seconds and then does not. Integration, sensors, and radios follow; then hardware security from the root of trust up; then a final week on measuring honestly, comparing real silicon, and the systems coming next. Roughly sixty percent architecture, twenty-five percent hands-on measurement, fifteen percent emerging technology — and the capstone is an architecture investigation, not an app.
How every book in this library is built.
You learn by doing.
Every chapter ends with reps. Every week ends with a real project. You finish the book having shipped fourteen things you can show someone.
The skill is in your hands.
The books are written so the work — typing, debugging, predicting — happens in you, not in the page. Reading without practicing is a comfortable trap.
The framing is honest.
These are LCMS-confessional Christian textbooks. The Christian framing shows up in projects, in the voice, in the questions the work is built around — not as veneer.