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Books on Programming Theory?
subversionfactor asks: "I am a philosophy student with an intense interest in mathematics and programming. However, while I've always been able to find books about various experimental areas of mathematics, I've never seen (m)any on the subject of programming theory. Most bookstores' "Tech" sections only include how-to books and books about why dot-coms failed. Does anyone in the Slashdot community have any recommendations for books dealing with any aspect of programming theory?"
Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming. Duh.
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programming, Abelson & Sussman
Art of Computer Programming, v1-4, Knuth (ok, so this is three titles)
Although "theory of programming" is rather weakly defined:
"The Art of Computer Programming" by Knuth
"Programming Pearls" by Bentley
"Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid" by Hofstadter
"The Tao of Programming"
Jargon File
While not strictly 'computer theory', the following books have definitely helped me to merge computer programming with philosophy...
...], Rousseau [Reveries of a Solitary Walker, ...], Seneca [Letters From a Stoic, ...]... it's the texts that dwell into abstraction, truth, human nature, etc...
"The Elegant Universe" - Greene
"Hyperspace" - Kaku
"The Bit and the Pendulum" - Siegfried
"The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" - Kuhn
"The Advent of the Aglorithm" - Berlinksi
"Orality & Literacy" - Ong
"Genome" - Ridley
"Philosophy of Mind" - Kim
Scientific American - Every issue
"Artificial Intelligence [A Modern Approach]" - Russel & Norvig
"Computer Organization & Design [The Hardware/Software Interface]" - Hennessey
And then of course Plato [The Republic, Timaeus & Critias, Phaedrus, etc..], Descarte [Meditations,
While non of these books will make you a better programmer persay, they all will make you understand how things relate, how to approach topics, and what people will get out of things...
I'm going to (a) give you a fish and (b) teach you how to catch more.
(a) Introduction to the Theory of Computation (Sipser, Michael; 1997, PWS Publishing Company; ISBN 0-534-94728-X; QA267.S56 1996b 511.3 --dc20; amazon page here) is a fantastic volume. We used it in a comp sci course I took, and is probably the only book from my dint in c.s. that I won't sell. This, however, brings us to the bit about fishing:
(b) Find out what courses at your university offer comp. sci theory, and then either (i) take the course (possibly pass/fail), or (ii) borrow their reading list. Contrary to your experiences in phil, virtually all (comp?) sci lectures are simple verbalisations of some gigantic glossy textbook. Those guys in the faculty of Science have far less interest in primary sources than we do; class time is not spent carefully teasing apart inscrutable two thousand year old sentences when a big glossy manual with colour diagrams are available.
- undoware.ca
"Introduction to Algorithms" by Cormen, Leisersen, Rivest, and Stein provides a much more readable, but, as always, not as in-depth alternative to Knuth.
* And remember, it's spelled N-e-t-s-c-a-p-e, but it's pronounced "Mozilla."
Brian Cantwell Smith
On the Origin of Objects
MIT Press
ISBN: 0-262-19363-9 (HB) 0-262-69209-0 (PB)
An exploration of object oriented programming turned philosophic inquiry. I've only read the first half; as a double major in Philosophy and CS I had to stop reading it so that my senior CS project did not devlove into a philosophy paper.
In my opinion, it strikes the perfect balance for a book of its kind between readability and technical detail. And, based on who wrote it, you can be sure that the tecnical detail is correct. Depending on what you mean by "programming theory", I'm not sure if this is exactly what you are looking for. But based on your stated background, I'm sure you'll love it.
Move on. There's nothing to see here.
... Just a few more things to throw in. If you're interested in Philsophy of Language and Phil. of Mathematics, you're also likely to be interested in formal semantics and other programming language areas, which are not neccessarily linked to "Theory of Computation". These fields delve much more into meaning of programming languages, rather than merely the computational or algorithmic side.
h tml
For semantics, I don't have any good sources to refer you to, as I've only got lecture notes explaining the basics, but you want to look for discussion of "denotational semantics" These are discussed most in the functional language community. The Scheme spec (r5rs) has a denotational semantics for the language. "Monads" are also an area of some interest... but monads and category theory may be leaning more towards the mathematical side.
Another related article:
Rayside, Derick, Gerard T. Campbell
"An Aristotelian Understanding of Object-Oriented Programming"
OOPSLA '00 10/00 Minneapolis, MN USA
[conference procedings]
http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/rayside00aristotelian.
Here are two cites ripped from a course web page somewhere:
J.C.Reynolds, Theories of Programming Languages, Cambridge University Press 1998, ISBN 0-521-59414-6
D.A.Schmidt, Denotational Semantics: A Methodology for Language Development, WCB Publishers, Dubuque, Iowa 1988, ISBN 0-697-06849-8
A few other things that may or may not be of interest in object oriented areas:
Black, Andrew, Jens Palsberg. Foundations of Object-Oriented Languages ACM SIGPLAN Notices. Volume 29, No. 3, March 1994.
Cook, William R., Walter L. Hill, and Peter S. Canning. Inheritance Is Not Subtyping. in Theoretical Aspects of Object-Oriented Design. ed. Carl A. Gunter and John C. Mitchel. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.: 1994.
Danforth, Scott, Chris Tomlinson. Type Theories and Object-Oriented Programming. ACM Comput-ing Surveys, Vol. 20, No. 1, March 1988, p. 29
While not strictly "theory", but more good programming attitude & habits - I highly recommend picking up a copy of "The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master". I cannot recommend this book nearly enough. While it may not teach you a specific language, it teaches you general best practices in getting the job done in an effective manner. I'll rip off one of the quotes from the Amazon.com page:
This book is an excellent distillation of practical experience and advice covering all phases of software development. While it's written mainly for the software developer, project managers will get valuable insight from the book on effective software development practice. The strength of this book is that it draws heavily from the authors' experience. Rather that promote a methodology, it promotes attitudes, values, tools and proven practices that will help anyone become a better software developer and make the job of software development more creative and stimulating. It's especially good for new software developers as it contains many lessons that experienced developers only learn the hard way. The book is well organized in easily digestible segments, with a very good cross reference system that makes it handy for repeated use. The appendix presents many valuable resources that professional programmers will want to explore.
I actually got introduced to it because the same guys later went on to write a pretty decent Book on Ruby. However useful that book was to learning Ruby, The Pragmatic Programmer was useful to fostering a positive set of habits and attitude toward programming in General. At least do yourself a favor and read the rest of the comments on Amazon.com before dismissing this underrated classic!
You can learn a lot about CS by looking at pre-1930 math and philosophy.
You'll see a lot of the genesis of proto-computer-science in Frege and Wittgenstein. Of course, it comes out full bore in Church and Turing. Any graduate-level logic text should cover combinatory logic (basically, with the lambda-calculus, the basis of functional programming). One such text (that I can recommend) is _Computability and Logic_, by Boolos.
Of course, SICP (as recommended elsewhere) is excellent, and the Sipser book (likewise) is a readable introduction to theory of computation.
What are you interested in? If you're interested in models for computation, check out the logic books. If you're interested in types (a la Russell), contrast logical types with PL types by reading Luca Cardelli's "Type Systems" (available online free from citeseer, use google). If you're interested in algorithms, Sedgewick or the massive MIT Press algorithms book is good.
You can't be hurt by reading the fundamentals, either: Church, Turing, Rosser, anything by Burstall or Hoare, and (if you're in for some fun), PL semantics (the seminal work in this area is Strachey/Scott). There is a good book available online called "Semantics with Applications" or something similar; I believe that the authors are named Nielsen.
Be careful, though. I was an undergrad philosophy major, and now I'm a grad student in programming languages.
Out of the people who recommend Knuth's the Art of Computer Programming, how many have actually read any book in that series? Or even 1/4 of any book in that series? 1%?
Not that they are bad books. I actually enjoy reading them and I'm working my way through the first one. The only problem is I can only get through about 5 pages before falling asleep (reading before I go to bed). Also, a suggestion if you're planning on reading any of these: keep a pad of paper and pencil nearby.
Oh, also for people who want slightly lighter reading, but still good. Check out Algorithms in C or Algorithms in C++ by Sedgewick. Very good books (same book different languages) and very easy to read. Also, I believe this guy and his coauther were students of Knuth at Stanford.
Best slashdot comment
I am a philosophy student with an intense interest in mathematics and programming...Does anyone...have any recommendations for books dealing with any aspect of programming theory?
It sounds like you are looking for Edsger Dijkstra's A Discipline of Programming, which is great fun if you can juggle math, logic, philosophy, and programming (in a non-deterministic language he made up for the book) without getting fixated on any one to the exclusion of the others. He starts with an interesting angle on why we have computers at all, and builds up from there.
-- MarkusQ
David Gries, The Science of Programming, Springer.
"This is the very first book to discuss the theory and principles of computer programming on the basis of the idea that a proof of correctness and a program should be developed hand in hand. It is built around the method first proposed by Dijkstra in his monograph The Discipline of Programming (1976), involving a "calculus for the derivation of programs." Directing his materials to the computer programmer with at least one year of experience, Gries presents explicit principles behind program development, and then leads the reader through example programs using those principles. Propositions and predicate calculus are presented as a took for the programmer, rather than simply an object of study. The reader should come away with a fresh outlook on programming theory and practice, and the assurance to develop correct programs effectively."
You're not a CS major, I take it.
Compare the work done by a bubble-sort to that of a quick-sort. This is independant of OS, compiler, library, and language. Good algorithms are above such details. When you're dealing with basic tasks like sorting, hashing, indexing, graph theory, list manipulation, etc., there are many fundamental theorms that transcend the particulars of the compiler or operating system. And many complex problems can be broken down into these sort of basic primitives.
I'm not implying that programming is all about these theoretical details, because it's not. But understanding the theory is an essential tool for being able to optimize a loop, write a library, or fix code in any case where time and space (i.e. code length) is of any concern.
wicked looking list.
not every issue of scientific american has dealt with programmming. maybe i'm biased because i read it throughout the 70's and 80's, but not so regularly in the last dozen years. maybe i'm jsut showing my age.
add this one: "The Society of Mind" - Marvin Minsky.
totally readable non-technical look at AI. brought to my attention by a geographer.
united states nuclear device terrorist bioweapon encryption cocaine korea syria iran iraq columbia cuba
A new kind of science - it's either genius or folly, but never is it boring...
Code complete by McConnell - very much about the practice, not so much about the theory, but still useful.
Software Engineering - a practitioners approach - useful overview.
Bentley's Programming Pearls - down n dirty.
It's all very well in practice, but it will never work in theory.
The first book try to condense modern computer science into a few hundred pages written for a layman (much like "A brief history of time" does it for physics). The second combines everything interesting (Art, music, mathematics, philosophy, literature, genetics, etc), with programming, and is among the most interesting books I've ever read.
The foundations of programming in Scheme is covered quite well in "Abelson & Sussman: Structured Interpretation of Computer Programs". But this is only one view. You may also want to read "Bertrand Meyer: Object-oriented software construction" for a relatively different view (more mainstream). Of course, when it comes to programming, there are no hard facts, and people tend to have a lot of differing opinions.
Functional programming and logic programming arose out of a need to make programming more like that of writing specifications, to make it easier to construct mathematical proofs. It would be a good idea to look into that as well. I can recommend "L. C. Paulson: ML for the working programmer" as a good introduction to functional programming. There are also a number of good books on Haskell, please pick one. When it comes to logic programming, things are unfortunately a bit more messy. The main logic programming language, "Prolog", is all but logical. Also, most research these days seems to focus on constraint programming, which is a generalization of logic programming. For a good online introduction, check out Oz Mozart.
The foundations of mathematics (logic, set-theory, category-theory, etc) are all important in computer science. And of course also more mundane subjects such as combinatorics, calculus, etc...
Logic relates to programming, as mathematics do to engineering. While formal methods have not had much practical value so far, it's an important part of computer science, and undoubtedly something that should become important sometime in the future, once we find a practical way to do it. The best place to get the basic ideas are still "Edsger Dijkstra: A discipline of programming". It's more than likely that you local CS department offers some courses.
Since your view is from philosophy, I guess you are more interested in the important insights of computer science, rather than the boring details. In that case, I can also recommend: "Papadimitrou: Computational Complexity" which covers more or less the same stuff as Harel's book, but in a bit more in depth. It would be good to have read a basic book on algorithms first (basically any will do, but I can recommend the books by Sedgewick, or Cormen, Leiserson & Rivest). By this time, you should be able to find your own references in computational complexity and algorithm analysis.