The Practice of Programming (Addison-Wesley Professional Computing Series) 1st Edition

by Brian Kernighan (Author), Rob Pike (Author)

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Amazon.com Review

Coauthored by Brian Kernighan, one of the pioneers of the C programming language, The Practice of Programming is a manual of good programming style that will help any C/C++ or Java developer create faster, more maintainable code.

Early sections look at some of the pitfalls of C/C++, with numerous real-world excerpts of confusing or incorrect code. The authors offer many tips and solutions, including a guide for variable names and commenting styles. Next, they cover algorithms, such as binary and quick sorting. Here, the authors show how to take advantage of the built-in functions in standard C/C++. When it comes to data structures, such as arrays, linked lists, and trees, the authors compare the options available to C, C++, Java, and even Perl developers with a random-text-generation program (using a sophisticated Markov chain algorithm) written for each language.

Subsequent sections cover debugging tips (including how to isolate errors with debugging statements) and testing strategies (both white-box and black-box testing) for verifying the correctness of code. Final sections offer tips on creating more portable C/C++ code, with the last chapter suggesting that programmers can take advantage of interpreters (and regular expressions) to gain better control over their code. A handy appendix summarizes the dozens of tips offered throughout the book.

With its commonsense expertise and range of examples drawn from C, C++, and Java, The Practice of Programming is an excellent resource for improving the style and performance of your code base. --Richard Dragan

Review

"The book fills a critical need by providing insight into pragmatic designand coding issues so that programmers become better at their craft...Programmers just out of school should be given this book on their first day of work. It will save employers thousands of dollars due to lost productivity and "mindless" debugging." -- Paul McNamee, Computer Scientist, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory

"The examples are just about right. Chapter 3's example (markov) is stellar; it is simple, thought-provoking, elegant, and most importantly, provides an opportunity to analyze good design... It is the most concise book of its kind and offers the most useful, no-nonsense treatment of how to program from authors who know a great deal about the topic." -- Peter Memishian, Member of Technical Staff, Sun Microsystems

"There is a tendency for many books to be in the high hundreds of pages long these days with very little justification. This text is well-written, and is not overly interdependent, thus allowing the reader to "skip around" as interests motivate.... I found [the examples] to be interesting. I like it when I don't have to spend time figuring out an example and I can concentrate on the lesson the example is trying to teach. Too many books have overly-complex examples, and this one doesn't." -- Chris Cleeland, Technical Lead, IONA Technologies, Inc.

"A great candidate to fill this widely perceived lack in the literature... Very solid and very educational, this manual is one I highly recommend to all programmers." -- Dr. Dobb's Electronic Review of Computer Books

"An outstanding book... a readable and well-written style combined with their experience and valuable expertise." -- Sys Admin

"This book is full of good common sense. In addition it is written in highly readable English. Pick up a copy, choose any chapter and start reading. I think you will then feel motivated to buy yourself a copy... Whatever language you program in, I think you will benefit from reading this book." -- Association of C & C++ Users

Rating 9/10: "Practical and enjoyable, this book captures its authors' considerable wisdom and experience." -- Slashdot.org

Read the full review for this book.

To be honest, there are quite a few books around that teach algorithms and the fundamentals of computer programming. The problem is that those books are commonly designed to support academic classes in computer science, and consequently shine on the theoretical side but leave something to be desired on the pragmatic front.

The Practice of Programming is a great candidate to fill this widely perceived lack in the literature that I commonly refer to as "for the industry." Authored by two experienced researchers of the Computing Science Research Center at the well-known Bell Labs (the name Brian Kernighan will ring a bell to the millions of C programmers), this manageable text conveys a fantastic quantity of suggestions and guidelines that will come in useful to all the neophytes of programming, and at the same time provides some sound tips and principles to the more seasoned among us. The first chapter approaches the delicate topic of good coding style; while the opinions on this are always subjective, those expressed by the authors seem generally acceptable and worth following. --Davide Marcato, Dr. Dobb's Electronic Review of Computer Books -- Dr. Dobb's Electronic Review of Computer Books

From the Back Cover

With the same insight and authority that made their book The Unix Programming Environment a classic, Brian Kernighan and Rob Pike have written The Practice of Programming to help make individual programmers more effective and productive.

The practice of programming is more than just writing code. Programmers must also assess tradeoffs, choose among design alternatives, debug and test, improve performance, and maintain software written by themselves and others. At the same time, they must be concerned with issues like compatibility, robustness, and reliability, while meeting specifications.

The Practice of Programming covers all these topics, and more. This book is full of practical advice and real-world examples in C, C++, Java, and a variety of special-purpose languages. It includes chapters on:

debugging: finding bugs quickly and methodically
testing: guaranteeing that software works correctly and reliably
performance: making programs faster and more compact
portability: ensuring that programs run everywhere without change
design: balancing goals and constraints to decide which algorithms and data structures are best
interfaces: using abstraction and information hiding to control the interactions between components
style: writing code that works well and is a pleasure to read
notation: choosing languages and tools that let the machine do more of the work

Kernighan and Pike have distilled years of experience writing programs, teaching, and working with other programmers to create this book. Anyone who writes software will profit from the principles and guidance in The Practice of Programming.

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About the Author

Brian W. Kernighan works in the Computing Science Research Center at Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies. He is Consulting Editor for Addison-Wesley's Professional Computing Series and the author, with Dennis Ritchie, of The C Programming Language.

Rob Pike works in the Computing Science Research Center at Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies. He was a lead architect and implementer of the Plan 9 and Inferno operating systems. His research focuses on software that makes it easier for people to write software.

020161586XAB04062001

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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Addison-Wesley; 1st edition (February 4, 1999)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 288 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 020161586X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0201615869
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.08 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8.98 x 7.64 x 0.52 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #258,219 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #660 in Computer Programming Languages
- #1,044 in Computer Software (Books)
- #1,172 in Programming Languages (Books)

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124 ratings

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J. B. Taylor

This book gives a good foundation for all programming practice

Reviewed in the United States on January 4, 2021

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I wish this book came out 50 years ago when I started coding. It would have made my lifer easier. I noticed right off if the principles, set out in this book, were put to use in ones life one would have a simpler and easier walk through this world. The main principles are:
1.keep the solution simple
2. write the code so others can understand it
3. annotate your code.
4. do not use fancy tricks just to show off

Good book buy it and live by it.

3 people found this helpful

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Unimon

Concise and Broadly Useful

Reviewed in the United States on September 14, 2021

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Brian Kernighan demonstrates conciseness in communication and clarity in his writing. The same has been true of software he's designed as well as examples in his books. In a world of 1,200 page forest killers, this 265p book contains as much with higher value. Broadly applicable, but most examples are in C. The more experienced you are, the more you'll appreciate it: Simplicity, Clarity, Generality

2 people found this helpful

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Alex G

A masterful work on programming

Reviewed in the United States on December 31, 2011

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Kernighan & Pike's "The Practice of Programming" (TPOP) is a short book in the general-advice-on-everything-related-to-programming genre. Both authors have impressive pedigrees, predisposing one to expect much from them. This book delivers: though the focus on C and the text's conciseness might put off some readers, this is a volume that is worth reading and re-reading.

The Good: it is a sad fact that even though a work like E. H. Gombrich's "Story of Art" attracts favorable reviews from young readers and accomplished artists alike, there are many programmers who feel the need to point out that they already know everything covered in Kernighan & Pike's TPOP. Let there be no doubt about this: "The Practice of Programming" is a masterful work, containing distilled wisdom. TPOP belongs to a very short list of programming books that deserve careful reading of even the minutest detail and amply reward such effort (Jon Bentley's "Programming Pearls" is another text on this list). Kernighan & Pike's text covers every aspect of practical programming, from style, through data structures, design, debugging, testing, performance, portability, up to special-purpose languages. It authoritatively covers a huge variety of topics, bringing to mind another important text, Steve McConnell's "Code Complete", which is easier to read, more detailed, and therefore 3.5 times longer. Even so, it's interesting to note that, unlike TPOP, "Code Complete" does not include exercises and does not discuss topics like tail recursion or endianness. On a different note, any book addressing the totality of programming is bound to disappoint a fraction of its potential readers by not using the language du jour. Kernighan & Pike have tried to preempt such complaints by including some mention of C++, Java, awk, and Perl, but in its core this book is C-oriented. C is still the lingua franca of programming, so this seems appropriate; as the authors put it, C "gives the programmer complete control over implementation, and programs written in it tend to be fast." Despite the conciseness and technical nature of TPOP, the authors manage to keep things flowing without mincing their words, e.g. "a lot of quick and dirty code ends up in widely-used software, where it remains dirty and often not as quick as it should have been anyway". Intriguingly, they are equally direct when discussing C-related issues, e.g. "rather than having memcpy for speed and memmove for safety, it would be better to have one function that was always safe, and fast when it could be." They also sneak in a joke or two, e.g. an enumerator in Plan 9's errors.h is called Egreg, which would have been funny even if it wasn't followed by the inimitable comment "It's all Greg's fault".

The Bad: parts of this book are non-trivial, e.g. the interplay of split() and advquoted() in the second C version of the CSV library. I'm bringing this up in the section on "The Bad" only because it's customary to expect a lot of filler in books on programming. In reality, this is one of the good aspects of TPOP: even when things get intricate it's worth putting in the effort to figure out what's going on. To quote Faulkner's (alleged) admonition in response to the complaint that some of his works are difficult to understand even after two or three readings: "read it a fourth time!" Of course, even though Kernighan & Pike are much more competent than the average programming author, they're still human, so they do sometimes produce phrases like this one: "Well-written programs are better than badly-written ones". At a more detailed level, I did notice a few minor issues. For example, in chapter 1 the authors rewrite a Java class and then say that the new version is better because "it leads to statements like queue.capacity++". However, directly accessing and changing a member variable violates encapsulation. Still at a fine-grained level, I spotted only one issue regarding the C code (other than the need to keep a reference handy at all times). In chapter 3 the authors say that the programs they show are production code and they also state that "the C programmer must do more of the work, allocating and reclaiming memory, creating hash tables and linked lists, and the like". Given both these points, one would expect that best practices imply that malloc'ed memory should be explicitly free'd, out of respect for the maintenance programmers to follow. However, the Markov chain C program does not do this. Finally, some of what this text has to say on C++ is non-idiomatic (though almost always still correct). Kernighan & Pike matter-of-factly mention or use int main(void), strcpy, strstr, and realloc in C++. A C++ aficionado might even go so far as to note that when they do use std::string (instead of C-style strings, as in the rest of the text) they get the number of characters from [the strlen() descendant] length() instead of [the STL mainstay] size().

In a nutshell, this book is a classic and is destined to remain one. This should come as no surprise to those who've read Kernighan & Pike's earlier "The Unix Programming Environment". Highly recommended.

Alex Gezerlis

23 people found this helpful

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RSM

Superb book for new C developers

Reviewed in the United States on November 24, 2015

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This book gets to the heart of a number of important, readily understood and (sadly) often dismissed factors affecting software development quality. Although the concepts are agnostic, the presentation is C centric and probably less valuable to those who don't know C. I've started using this book (again) with less experienced C developers or those that have never had the opportunity to consider code as an organizational asset where quality of construction has a tangible organizational value in the long term.

6 people found this helpful

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Robert Solomon

Older book but still relevant

Reviewed in the United States on September 1, 2019

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Published in 1999, but it gives the approach of the authors. Rob Pike is a co-creator of Go, and this book helps explain many of the design choices that were made in Go. For example, Rob Pike will let a ternary operator into Go over his dead body. That is, NEVER!

4 people found this helpful

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Robert Bogetti

Programming Knowledge Cornucopia

Reviewed in the United States on December 7, 2005

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An excellent book covering all of the essential areas of knowledge necessary to become a professional programmer and should be required reading for those without a formal computer science background. The examples are brief but rich in content. Major topics covered include: style, algorithms, design, implementation, optimization, interfaces, debugging, testing, performance, portability, and notation (languages). Each topic is discussed with emphasis on content and application of knowledge, not a lot of extraneous verbiage, just simple, solid content. This text is also great as a quick refresher for information on lists, hash tables, trees, algorithmic design and implementation, and good interface design rules. Provided are good "rules of thumb" for debugging and thoughts on portability along with ideas for writing code generators.

Some of the examples can be somewhat terse and break the authors rules for clarity and following standard language idioms. However, it is highly recommended to take the time to fully understand the examples in order to extract the most benefit. One final note, while working on a large re-engineering project we have proven that the "bear" technique really works, you'll have to read the text for the answer, it deals with auditory versus visual triggers and thinking.

6 people found this helpful

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Patrick S Malloy

Complete out your Kernighan collection

Reviewed in the United States on June 20, 2015

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Each of Kernighan's books covers a different aspect of software development. Each one provides perspectives from a leader in the field detailing items now taken for granted as good practices. Here is a person who helped establish those practices though, helping to advance the larger software development process. Sometimes it is useful to take a step back to look at what processes lead to things today and how some ideas should be revisited. Kernighan always has a very easy to follow style to read.

4 people found this helpful

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online customer

Item as described. Satisfactory/Adequate. Thank you.

Reviewed in the United States on December 17, 2020

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Item as described. Satisfactory/Adequate. Thank you.

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ariccio92

The bible for prgrammers

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 29, 2019

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Although it has more than twenty years, this book is still very useful and actual for those who want to approach to programming in a professional manner. Full of examples and practical experiences. Definitely recommended.

One person found this helpful

Paul Lynch

The Way that can be followed is not the eternal Way

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 13, 2007

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This book is one of the (very few) classics of software development. It is written in a simple style that is easy to understand, but offers great truths. Many people with limited experience won't be able to fully appreciate what it has to offer; this is the collation of two lifetimes of experience in the field, written so that that anyone can follow, although some may lack the insight to understand.

For programming novices, they would be better to start with a book that addresses the concerns of beginners, like Code Complete. Once they have digested the lessons it has to offer, it is time to move on to a more advanced book, like The Pragmatic Programmer. In time, when the lessons offered have been fully comprehended, the novice may be able to start to become a serious professional - and read The Practice of Programming.

3 people found this helpful

Borja Marcos

Should be mandatory reading for any newcomer to programming

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 19, 2001

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A must in these dark times of complex bloated programming with braindead operating systems and horrible APIs, disguised as "software engineering". A masterwork written by people who work in one of the few places where actual innovation is taking place, who have done substantial contributions to systems software research, and still doing them (Plan 9, for example). A sort of manifest against the current trends in software development, written by people who have worked (and presumably work) on critical systems such as phone switches. Read this book, then read "The Mythical Man-Month" by Fred P. Brooks and start to wonder why software quality is decreasing and the same errors in the past are repeated again and again. I repeat: This is a true masterwork.

9 people found this helpful

S. A

A sound read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 28, 2008

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There is a lot of good advice in this book, from writing automatic testbench generators to using macros in C. However, the concepts are not always clearly illustrated and the examples suffer from the same drawback as other books by the same authors, in that they are too Computer Science oriented.

Could have been written better but then again, there are few books out there on this subject that are as well written.

3 people found this helpful

dcw803

excellent book, pleasure to read it (again)

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 15, 2013

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Brilliant book, clear, lucid, extremely well written, great pleasure to make it's acquaintance again.
Kernighan and Pike have a huge amount of practical experience and wisdom which they communicate
with enthusiasm and skill.

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The Practice of Programming (Addison-Wesley Professional Computing Series) 1st Edition

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