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A New Bible For Programmers?

Posted by timothy on from the squinty-little-eyes dept.

KZigurs writes "The wonders of online publishing... If you are ready to take on a heroic task and read thru all 976 pages of Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming (draft) (pdf file, 3MB, intro here) written by Peter Van Roy and Seif Haridi you won't regret it. Just finished reading it and I feel like I have read the Bible. And who knows? It has the potential, and since current de facto books about programming are aging with increasing speed it very well may become one. (Please read the intro to get more detailed outlook at topics covered)
Anyone before heard about Oz?"

7 of 117 comments (clear)

  1. Newer Copy Available by erasmus_ · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'm not sure why the article links to the April 26th draft version of the book, when the intro page itself has the link to the much newer June 5th version.

    http://www.info.ucl.ac.be/people/PVR/booksingle.pd f

    I look forward to reading it from the intro, however, might be really worthwhile.

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  2. Google's Cached HTML Version by IdleMindUI · · Score: 3, Informative

    It appears that the site is already...umm...slashdotted. Google's cached HTML version can be found here.

  3. Another Bible by Ann+Coulter · · Score: 4, Informative

    Design Patterns.

  4. Already slashdotted? by stienman · · Score: 3, Informative

    The google cache of the pdf (converted to HTML by google) is here.

    -Adam

  5. Mozart & Oz in the book by joelparker · · Score: 4, Informative
    The book uses the Mozart Programming System

    Mozart & Oz are well-developed and worth a look--
    your programming may improve because of them.

    Cheers, Joel

    p.s. here are quick excerpts:

    The Mozart Programming System is an advanced development platform for intelligent, distributed applications. The system is the result of a decade of research in programming language design and implementation, constraint-based inference, distributed computing, and human-computer interfaces...

    Mozart is based on the Oz language, which supports declarative programming, object-oriented programming, constraint programming, and concurrency as part of a coherent whole...

    We have developed many applications including sophisticated collaborative tools, multi-agent systems, and digital assistants, as well as applications in natural language understanding and knowledge representation, in scheduling and time-tabling, and in placement and configuration.

  6. Mirror Here by Bluetrust25 · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's mirrored here courtesy of SurveyComplete.

    Incedentally, I highly recommend the book Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction by Steve C McConnell. It tought me more about programming than the rest of my computer book bookshelf!

    Another great resource is Safari. It's a web service that for a fee, allows you to view O'reilly, Que, and Sams books online. I find the code search feature to be invaluable. Cheap way to read technical books.

  7. Re:OutDated? by Arandir · · Score: 4, Informative

    Just like long division, there are times when you need to write your own search or sort algorithm. Why?

    1) Sometimes it's easier to write your own sort than to write a weird ass adaptor for your weird ass data.

    2) Sometimes "good enough" isn't "good enough" and you need that extra 15% performance increase you get for writing a search/sort customized for your data.

    3) Actually knowing how stuff works is good for the brain. After you learn basic bonehead algorithms, take some time to learn long division as well.

    4) Just to prove that you aren't a code monkey destined for the dustheap of history when you turn thirty.

    --
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