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Books On Structured Design?

Posted by Cliff on from the functional-coding-CAN-be-elegant,-krow dept.

buzzword asks: "In the current climate of Object Oriented everything, it seems that no one is bothering to teach structured programming anymore. I dimly recall that there were several design methodologies and practices associated with non-OO programming which were powerful and not as arcane as the current method fascist stuff. Are there any books still in print that address this issue?"

8 comments

  1. Dahl, Dijkstra, and Hoare by Gerv · · Score: 2

    Structured Programming, by O.-J. Dahl, E. W. Dijkstra, and C. A. R. Hoare has been continuously in print since 1972. It came highly recommended by Don Knuth, no less, in his recent lecture.

    Gerv

    1. Re:Dahl, Dijkstra, and Hoare by Snowfox · · Score: 2

      Structured Programming, by O.-J. Dahl, E. W. Dijkstra, and C. A. R. Hoare has been continuously in print since 1972. It came highly recommended by Don Knuth, no less, in his recent lecture.

      I can't find a copy of this anywhere. Pointers?

  2. Essence of program design by gruppa · · Score: 2

    It's a slim book that concisely covers many ways of structuring your code (including OO):
    Title: Essence of Program Design, 1/e
    Author: Doug Bell, Sheffield Hallam University
    Publisher: Prentice Hall
    Copyright 1997, 200 pp.
    ISBN 0-13-367806-7

    I would give you a link to the publisher's page, but it doesn't have any more information.

    Worth at least finding out if your library has it

  3. Getting started - here's some pointers by martyb · · Score: 2

    Here's some ideas on how to get started.

    1. Do a search on-line. A quick query at google. For example, search for:
      • "structured programming" ISBN
      brought up a couple thousand hits. Browse through the results until you find something YOU find interesting.
    2. Check out book publishers web pages, for example: Addison-Wesley
    3. Go to a library (ideally a college/university which has programming courses) but if you are nice to the folks at the information desk... well, I've been AMAZED at what they've been able to do to help me find information.
    4. Think of organizations that would have promulgated this info in the past and check out what they have to offer. Places like the ACM - Association for Computing Machinery which has been around since 1947 and which published journals on the latest in research in computer systems.
    5. Check the bibliographies of any books or articles you find for pointers to other works.
    6. It's been about 10 years since I last was active in this area, so I don't even remember what some of these acronyms stand for, but here are a few that I remember:
      • DFD (Data Flow Diagram)
      • DMD (Data Model Diagram)
      • LDM (Logical Data Model)
      • SASD (not sure, but IIRC Systems Design - was bin in the United Kingdom)
      • Structure Charts
      • AD/Cycle (A huge undertaking by IBM to bring all the major CASE (computer aided software engineering) companies at the time (Intersolv, Bachman, Knowledgeware?) together and to provide a central repository for all of the vendor's modeling information.)

    Take a course in Data Structures, too. Of all the courses I took in college, this is one whose principles I still use each day. Knowing when to use scalars, vectors (arrays), linear or circular lists (singly- or doubly-linked), hashes, and databases... if the DATA is organized RIGHT, writing the algorithms to access it is GREATLY simplified! Use the right tools for the job.

    I've seen too many programmers who just hack away at code until it seems to work -- great to see you trying to use other's knowledge and experience to bring some design and order into your programming! Good Luck!

    1. Re:Getting started - here's some pointers by Kyudosha · · Score: 1

      Damn straight! Algorithm Design & Data Structures might not have been the most FUN class in the world, but it's the one that I call on most often in my mind. Structured non-object-oriented programming is important to coders, lest we lose sight of the way that Von Neumann really runs down there. -K

      --
      ç
  4. Sure... by sohp · · Score: 1

    I might have a couple of dusty worm-eaten volumes from my college days shoved under my couch. Hey! I have some Atari VCS cartridges, a stack of 8-track tapes, and a rotary dial phone, too. I'll make you a good deal on the lot.

  5. Re:Dahl, Dijkstra, and Hoare (ISBN) by dead_penguin · · Score: 1

    The isbn is 0122005503. Check your favourite online bookstores. Then check amazon.

    --

    It's only software!
  6. collections focus by Tablizer · · Score: 1
    Take a course in Data Structures, too. Of all the courses I took in college, this is one whose principles I still use each day. Knowing when to use scalars, vectors (arrays), linear or circular lists (singly- or doubly-linked), hashes, and databases... if the DATA is organized RIGHT, writing the algorithms to access it is GREATLY simplified! Use the right tools for the job.

    This seems more for low-level stuff. It was interesting to learn (waaay back then), but I think that data modeling and generic collection interfaces (regardless of implementation since it might change) is a much more useful focus unless you will be doing something that is close to the equipment, such as embedded programming.

    Many of the famous procedural texts are pre-relational, and that kind of bothers me.

    I tend to see a wider role for tables than just persistence. Some non-SQL-based languages made tables much more pleasent than arrays. Arrays are the Goto of collections IMO.

    --
    Table-ized A.I.