Customer Reviews

Systems Programming With Modula-3 (Prentice Hall Series in Innovative Technology)

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Modula-3 is a little known language, but was highly influential on the design of Java. Although the language itself is of mostly historical interest now, this book is a wonderful introduction to a principled approach to both language and software design. Chapter five on threads is still the classic introduction to the topic. Chapter six is a wonderful case-study in rigorous, object-oriented design. Chapter seven is a great tutorial on building complex, multi-threaded libraries.

If you want to be a serious programmer, you have to read this book.

Table of contents:

1. Introduction
2. Language Definition
3. Standard Interfaces
4. An Introduction to Programming with Threads
5. Thread Synchronization: A Formal Specification
6. I/O Streams: Abstract Types, Real Programs
7. Trestle Window System Tutorial
8. How the Language Got its Spots

This book is the perfect quick reference book for the more basic aspects of Modula-3, including the language definition and standard interfaces. It also includes good tutorials on Threads, Trestle, etc. for when you want to move further, and a jolly section at the end explaining some of the design decisions underlying Modula-3.