Customer Reviews

How to Solve It by Computer (Prentice-Hall International Series in Computer Science)

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I bought this book in 1990. I still read it from time to time. I could not have been a successful programmer without this. I would strongly recommend this to anybody who wants to be a programmer. The first ever book you should read. I will save this book for my children, grand children and so on.

This book "How to solve it by computer" is a must read book for those who want to be programmer. Dromey he teaches each and every problem in the easy and understanble way.He does't use any particular language to solve all those problems, he just uses psudo code engish like language. Any persona who wants to be programmer should first read this book and then only start learning Porgramming languages.

This book should be treated as Bible. It starts with very simple examples as swaping two numbers and goes in depth taking you along with it. I have not found anything as good as this in many years. It gives a beginner programmer much needed confidence very soon. It does not use much programming language (It uses pascal syntax...but pascal is almost English). If you are entering into programming field..start with this book. You will never forget "How to Solve it by computers" in your entire life. This book has no shelf life. You will never need this again....but you cannot do it without first time. Computer Algorithm teaching at its VERY BEST!

I did not find any book on programming which could be used on any language without much difficulty. Its presents the logic exactly the way I like - "Discover your way to the solution!"

I have six or seven "analysis of algorithms" type texts and this is a favorite. From time to time when coworkers notice the title on my bookshelf, they give me some grief for it, but I vigorously defend it. It is a very practical text (as opposed to just theory). I have a bookmark in the section on random number generators and like to point out the a reference about one of the methods: X(n+1) = [a * X(n) + b] mod c. He refers to about 150 pages of Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming for an excellent theoretical description as to how a, b, and c should be chosen, but then summarizes in less than a page a "good" way of choosing them that yields results good enough for most uses.

I stumbled upon this great book in algorithms called "How to
Solve it by Computer" by Dromey. I came across it when I was
finding material on the classic work by Polya "How to
Solve it" (1957) which is not directly related to Computer Science.

Dromey has applied Polya's work to CS and has even dedicated
his text to him. Although the book is fairly fundamental,
the style is excellent. He starts with the most obvious (not
so good solution) and *incrementally* builds on that
solution till he refines it to the most optimal solution.

The book also discusses relatively advanced materials like dynamic programming and Longest Monotone Subsequence.

The book was written in 1982 when Pascal was prevalent, so
the solutions are in Pascal, but nonetheless its a true
classic !

this book is necessary for those who wish to make programming as their career. This book helps beginners to build up their programming logic.