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The Science of Programming (Texts and Monographs in Computer Science)
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Author: David Gries
List Price: $54.95
Our Price: Click to see the latest and low price
ISBN: 0387964800
Publisher: Springer Verlag (January, 1998)
Edition: Paperback
Sales Rank: 490,266
Average Customer Rating: 5 out of 5
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Customer ReviewsRating: 5 out of 5
A good book that can enhance your programming
If you want to make a good programmer,you should study it. Many programmers just like programming , but they ignore how to verify their program is whether good enough or not.
Rating: 5 out of 5
One of the best computing books of all time
This book makes my top-ten list of best computing books of the decade of the eighties. It certainly changed my outlook on how to write programs. The incorporation of logic into the code to mathematically prove that it works correctly was an ideal in the eighties and to some extent it remains an ideal. Nevertheless, that is not a reflection of the value of program correctness, but a consequence of the slow changes that sometimes take place in computing. Programmers may change their languages easily, but often not their styles.
At the time this book came out, I was in the process of designing and adding a course in computation theory with an emphasis on program correctness at Mount Mercy College. Before I encountered this book, I was having a difficult time pressing my case. However, after this book came out and I could use some of the comments regarding the significance of its' content, the course was easily approved. I also used the book in the class and the student comments were overwhelmingly positive. Ten years later, the book is still used in the class, something that is rare in computing.
The quality of the writing and explanations of the examples in the book are outstanding. Most of the students had no experience in formal logic, and yet they had little difficulty understanding and applying the concepts. The examples of proving the code correct were well chosen and I rarely heard any of the traditional complaints from math students regarding their frustrations over having to work through proofs.
The quality of programs would be dramatically increased if the principles of program correctness in this book were widely adopted. I continue to push for it every chance I get, and this review is one part of that push.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Excellent book on writing correct programs
The book provides an excellent introduction to logic and then shows how by using the language of logic and mathematics to specify pre-conditions and post-conditions one can develop provably correct programs from these pre-conditions and post-conditions.I have used the methods in this book to develop advanced algorithms in Computer Graphics which could not have been developed in any other way. The book is both a tutorial and reference. It is clearly written and organized. When I first read this book, it was as though a bolt of lightning had struck me. Applying its methods, I became a much better programmer. I went from someone who struggled to get the code right to someone who always got the code right. For the first time I understood what programming was all about. I read the book on vacation while my wife and I were staying at my father's home in Sag Harbor New York and it was one of the most incredible intellectual adventures of my life. I'll never forget the smell of the sea and the sand and the logic going off like lightning flashes inside my brain.
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