Skip to Content
The Practice of Programming
book

The Practice of Programming

by Brian W. Kernighan, Rob Pike
February 1999
Intermediate to advanced
288 pages
9h 18m
English
Addison-Wesley Professional
Content preview from The Practice of Programming

Chapter 3: Design and Implementation

Show me your flowcharts and conceal your tables, and I shall continue to be mystified. Show me your tables, and I won’t usually need your flowcharts; they’ll be obvious.

Frederick P. Brooks, Jr., The Mythical Man Month

As the quotation from Brooks’s classic book suggests, the design of the data structures is the central decision in the creation of a program. Once the data structures are laid out, the algorithms tend to fall into place, and the coding is comparatively easy.

This point of view is oversimplified but not misleading. In the previous chapter we examined the basic data structures that are the building blocks of most programs. In this chapter we will combine such structures as we work through the ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.

Read now

Unlock full access

More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly

AirBnbBlueOriginElectronic ArtsHomeDepotNasdaqRakutenTata Consultancy Services

QuotationMarkO’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
Julian F.
Head of Cybersecurity
QuotationMarkI wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.
Addison B.
Field Engineer
QuotationMarkI’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.
Amir M.
Data Platform Tech Lead
QuotationMarkI'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Mark W.
Embedded Software Engineer

You might also like

The Programmer's Brain

The Programmer's Brain

Felienne Hermans
Programming Interviews Exposed, 4th Edition

Programming Interviews Exposed, 4th Edition

John Mongan, Noah Suojanen Kindler, Eric Giguere
The Art of Clean Code

The Art of Clean Code

Christian Mayer

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9780133133448Purchase book