Customer Reviews

Theoretical Foundations of Computer Science

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In the context of what we offer at the school where I teach, this book is a bit schizophrenic. The material in the first part would be reasonably suitable for our course in computation theory and the material of the last part for our course in programming language concepts.
The first section covers finite automata, pushdown automata and Turing machines. In the second part of the initial section, solvable and unsolvable problems and computational complexity are covered. The last section of the book deals with formal semantics, both operational and denotational. In the last two chapters, proving program correctness and parallel computation are examined.
While this book certainly retains value as a reference, it is difficult to see where it could be used as a textbook in a computer science curriculum.

This book is an introduction to very important fields in computer science. It presents an introduction to the theory of abstract machines (automata), formal languages, complexity analysis and formal semantics.
Gives a formal explanation of the concepts which I apreciate, but for undergraduate students it can be very hard to understand. In any case, it is very dificult to avoid this formal explanation since it is the only way to understand these topics.
At the end of each chapter It presents only a few exercises, and some of them are very dificult to solve (even with the sketchy solutions). Therefore, the student (undergraduate or graduate) cannot completly make good use of this material.
I don't recomend to use this book as a main book for a course, but I recommend it as a backup for the main book, since the explanation of the concepts by means of formal theories can be very useful.
Finally, I give the book a 3 points rating because It doesn't explain very well the concepts in plain english and It only presents very few examples. Also, the exercises are sometimes very dificult to solve and the sketchy solutions are not very helpful. Nevertheless, it is one of the most complete books about theoretical computer science.

I'm a University Teacher in Paraguay, and we being using this book permanently. Its the BIBLE of Computational Theory. Thanks!