More Programming Pearls: Confessions of a Coder [FACSIMILE] (Paperback)

~ Jon Bentley (Author)
Key Phrases: selection routine, associative arrays, little languages, Little's Law, Don't Know, United States (more...)

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Product Description

What do topics ranging from organic chemistry to Napoleon's campaigns have to do with computer programming? This collection of essays demonstrates the many varied aspects of programming, showing how programming can be both a fun and elegant science. Some of the essays cover programming techniques, like how profilers can provide insight into the dynamic behavior of programs, and methods for making data files self-describing. These techniques deal with real programs and they are realistically illustrated, using the C and Awk languages. Bentley also provides the reader with some tricks of the programmer's trade, like a collection of rules of thumb and hints for finding simple solutions to hard problems. These essays also originally appeared in the author's column in Communication of the ACM, and have been substantially revised, incorporating new sections, problems, and reader comments. 0201118890B04062001

From the Back Cover

What do topics ranging from organic chemistry to Napoleon's campaigns have to do with computer programming? This collection of essays demonstrates the many varied aspects of programming, showing how programming can be both a fun and elegant science.

Some of the essays cover programming techniques, like how profilers can provide insight into the dynamic behavior of programs, and methods for making data files self-describing. These techniques deal with real programs and they are realistically illustrated, using the C and Awk languages. Bentley also provides the reader with some tricks of the programmer's trade, like a collection of rules of thumb and hints for finding simple solutions to hard problems.

These essays also originally appeared in the author's column in Communication of the ACM, and have been substantially revised, incorporating new sections, problems, and reader comments.

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional; Facsimile edition (January 11, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201118890
• ISBN-13: 978-0201118896
• Product Dimensions: 9.7 x 6.1 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #231,894 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Leftovers from Programming Pearls, January 12, 2009

By	Johan Kotlinski "kotlinski" (Stockholm, Sweden) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book follows the same format as the original Programming Pearls (2nd Edition) (ACM Press), but the content is very different. Where Programming Pearls has a strong focus on performance and algorithms, this book is a mixed bag. It presents articles on practical things like profiling (pre-gprof), associative arrays, how to represent data in text (pre-XML), a collection of computer science quotes, the Pic language, creating graphs (pre-Excel)...

Compared to the timeless puzzles and mind expanders of Programming Pearls, the practical nature of these articles make them susceptible to aging. There is some interesting stuff - for example it was nice to get an introduction to the Pic language. But it's by no means an essential book. I don't regret getting it, but if I lost it, I wouldn't get a new copy.