Covers Expression, Structure, Common Blunders, Documentation, & Structured Programming Techniques

Elements of Programming provides a different understanding of programming than is presented elsewhere. Its major premise is that practical programming, like other areas of science and engineering, must be based on a solid mathematical foundation. This book shows that algorithms implemented in a real programming language, such as C++, can operate in the most general mathematical setting. For example, the fast exponentiation algorithm is defined to work with any associative operation. Using abstract algorithms leads to efficient, reliable, secure, and economical software.

The Elements of Java Style, written by renowned author Scott Ambler, Rogue Wave Software Vice President Alan Vermeulen, and a team of programmers from Rogue Wave, is for anyone who writes Java code. While there are many books that explain the syntax and basic use of Java, this book, first published in 2000, explains not just what you can do with the syntax, but what you ought to do. Just as Strunk and White's The Elements of Style provides rules of usage for the English language, this book provides a set of rules for Java practitioners to follow. While illustrating these rules with parallel examples of correct and incorrect usage, the book provides a collection of standards, conventions, and guidelines for writing solid Java code which will be easy to understand, maintain, and enhance. Anyone who writes Java code or plans to should have this book next to their computer.

Many neophyte programmers now begin their careers by learning the metalanguage, Perl. But the books currently available on Perl assume their readers already understand the basics of writing and designing programs--when in fact they do not. The tutorial teaches programming right along with the particulars of Perl syntax, as well as good style and structure and maintainability of the code.

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.

Are you an SQL programmer that, like many, came to SQL after learning and writing procedural or object-oriented code? Or have switched jobs to where a different brand of SQL is being used, or maybe even been told to learn SQL yourself? If even one answer is yes, then you need this book. A "Manual of Style" for the SQL programmer, this book is a collection of heuristics and rules, tips, and tricks that will help you improve SQL programming style and proficiency, and for formatting and writing portable, readable, maintainable SQL code. Based on many years of experience consulting in SQL shops, and gathering questions and resolving his students' SQL style issues, Joe Celko can help you become an even better SQL programmer. - Help you write Standard SQL without an accent or a dialect that is used in another programming language or a specific flavor of SQL, code that can be maintained and used by other people. - Enable you to give your group a coding standard for internal use, to enable programmers to use a consistent style. - Give you the mental tools to approach a new problem with SQL as your tool, rather than another programming language — one that someone else might not know!

Peter Seibel interviews 15 of the most interesting computer programmers alive today in Coders at Work, offering a companion volume to Apress’s highly acclaimed best-seller Founders at Work by Jessica Livingston. As the words “at work” suggest, Peter Seibel focuses on how his interviewees tackle the day-to-day work of programming, while revealing much more, like how they became great programmers, how they recognize programming talent in others, and what kinds of problems they find most interesting. Hundreds of people have suggested names of programmers to interview on the Coders at Work web site: www.codersatwork.com. The complete list was 284 names. Having digested everyone’s feedback, we selected 15 folks who’ve been kind enough to agree to be interviewed: Frances Allen: Pioneer in optimizing compilers, first woman to win the Turing Award (2006) and first female IBM fellow Joe Armstrong: Inventor of Erlang Joshua Bloch: Author of the Java collections framework, now at Google Bernie Cosell: One of the main software guys behind the original ARPANET IMPs and a master debugger Douglas Crockford: JSON founder, JavaScript architect at Yahoo! L. Peter Deutsch: Author of Ghostscript, implementer of Smalltalk-80 at Xerox PARC and Lisp 1.5 on PDP-1 Brendan Eich: Inventor of JavaScript, CTO of the Mozilla Corporation Brad Fitzpatrick: Writer of LiveJournal, OpenID, memcached, and Perlbal Dan Ingalls: Smalltalk implementor and designer Simon Peyton Jones: Coinventor of Haskell and lead designer of Glasgow Haskell Compiler Donald Knuth: Author of The Art of Computer Programming and creator of TeX Peter Norvig: Director of Research at Google and author of the standard text on AI Guy Steele: Coinventor of Scheme and part of the Common Lisp Gang of Five, currently working on Fortress Ken Thompson: Inventor of UNIX Jamie Zawinski: Author of XEmacs and early Netscape/Mozilla hacker

The core of EPI is a collection of over 300 problems with detailed solutions, including 100 figures, 250 tested programs, and 150 variants. The problems are representative of questions asked at the leading software companies. The book begins with a summary of the nontechnical aspects of interviewing, such as common mistakes, strategies for a great interview, perspectives from the other side of the table, tips on negotiating the best offer, and a guide to the best ways to use EPI. The technical core of EPI is a sequence of chapters on basic and advanced data structures, searching, sorting, broad algorithmic principles, concurrency, and system design. Each chapter consists of a brief review, followed by a broad and thought-provoking series of problems. We include a summary of data structure, algorithm, and problem solving patterns.

This 2004 book contains guidelines for writing consistent C++ code that's easy to understand, enhance and maintain. Perfect for teams.

The Elements of MATLAB Style is a guide for both new and experienced MATLAB programmers. It provides a comprehensive collection of standards and guidelines for creating solid MATLAB code that will be easy to understand, enhance, and maintain. It is written for both individuals and those working in teams in which consistency is critical. This is the only book devoted to MATLAB style and best programming practices, focusing on how MATLAB code can be written in order to maximize its effectiveness. Just as Strunk and White's The Elements of Style provides rules for writing in the English language, this book provides conventions for formatting, naming, documentation, programming and testing. It includes many concise examples of correct and incorrect usage, as well as coverage of the latest language features. The author also provides recommendations on use of the integrated development environment features that help produce better, more consistent software.