Book description
“Ask a mechanical, structural, or electrical engineer how
far they would get without a heavy reliance on a firm mathematical
foundation, and they will tell you, ‘not far.’ Yet
so-called software engineers often practice their art with little
or no idea of the mathematical underpinnings of what they are
doing. And then we wonder why software is notorious for being
delivered late and full of bugs, while other engineers routinely
deliver finished bridges, automobiles, electrical appliances, etc.,
on time and with only minor defects. This book sets out to redress
this imbalance. Members of my advanced development team at Adobe
who took the course based on the same material all benefited
greatly from the time invested. It may appear as a highly technical
text intended only for computer scientists, but it should be
required reading for all practicing software
engineers.”
—Martin Newell, Adobe Fellow
“The book contains some of the most beautiful code I
have ever seen.”
—Bjarne Stroustrup, Designer of C++
“I am happy to see the content of Alex’s course, the
development and teaching of which I strongly supported as the CTO
of Silicon Graphics, now available to all programmers in this
elegant little book.”
—Forest Baskett, General Partner, New
Enterprise Associates
“Paul’s patience and architectural experience helped to
organize Alex’s mathematical approach into a
tightly-structured edifice—an impressive feat!”
—Robert W. Taylor, Founder of Xerox PARC
CSL and DEC Systems Research Center
Elements of Programming provides a different
understanding of programming than is presented elsewhere. Its major
premise is that practical programming, like other areas of science
and engineering,must be based on a solid mathematical foundation.
The book shows that algorithms implemented in a real programming
language, such as C++, can operate in the most general mathematical
setting. For example, the fast exponentiation algorithm is
defined to work with any associative operation. Using abstract
algorithms leads to efficient, reliable, secure, and economical
software.
This is not an easy book. Nor is it a compilation of tips and
tricks for incremental improvements in your programming skills. The
book’s value is more fundamental and, ultimately, more
critical for insight into programming. To benefit fully, you will
need to work through it from beginning to end, reading the code,
proving the lemmas, and doing the exercises. When finished, you
will see how the application of the deductive method to your
programs assures that your system’s software components will
work together and behave as they must.
The book presents a number of algorithms and requirements for types
on which they are defined. The code for these
descriptions—also available on the Web—is written in a
small subset of C++ meant to be accessible to any experienced
programmer. This subset is defined in a special language appendix
coauthored by Sean Parent and Bjarne Stroustrup.
Whether you are a software developer, or any other professional for
whom programming is an important activity, or a committed student,
you will come to understand what the book’s experienced
authors have been teaching and demonstrating for years—that
mathematics is good for programming, and that theory is good for
practice.
Table of contents
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Contents
- Preface
- About the Authors
- 1. Foundations
- 2. Transformations and Their Orbits
- 3. Associative Operations
- 4. Linear Orderings
- 5. Ordered Algebraic Structures
- 6. Iterators
- 7. Coordinate Structures
- 8. Coordinates with Mutable Successors
- 9. Copying
- 10. Rearrangements
- 11. Partition and Merging
- 12. Composite Objects
- Afterword
- Appendix A. Mathematical Notation
- Appendix B. Programming Language
- Bibliography
- Index
Product information
- Title: Elements of Programming
- Author(s):
- Release date: June 2009
- Publisher(s): Addison-Wesley Professional
- ISBN: 9780321643926
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