"Ana Bell, lecturer in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, chooses the best books to learn computer science and programming."
Headlines, including subheads, often suck. Yes, when you read the content, her actual discussion isn't exactly what the subhead suggests. That is a good reason for criticizing the subhead you quote. It's not a good reason for criticizing her recommendations, though.
Does Code Complete and it's sibling not teach the aspects of programming involved in maintenance and cleanliness? Is that not a major aspect of programming? Just because none of the books teach you at-a-basic-level "This is a function" doesn't mean that they have nothing whatsoever to do with programming. Most of the difficulty with programming is structuring code correctly such that it is within the human grasp of complexity, while ensuring that it also does the job, and is maintainable.
Maybe? I think the intent was similar to applied mathematics compared to mathematics.
In that computer science is ultimately behind computer programming, but most people don't care about the theory and only use applied theories in day to day work.
But I'm stretching a bit as I can't read minds over the internet yet.
