A New Bible For Programmers?

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?"

Comments

Very interesting, also for non-programmers

[tsa]

I am not a programmer but this seems to me a very interesting book for people who want to have a detailed yet general (hope you understand what I mean) idea of what's going on inside their computers as they are hammering their keyboards. Seriously, popular books on computer programming usually learn you how to use a certain programming language and not the concepts behind writing a computer program so this is a must-read for all people that want to learn to program computers.

OutDated?

[peripatetic_bum]

since current de facto books about programming are aging with increasing speed

I'm sorry to sound susppicious, but the concepts of programming are not out dated. The problem is tat programming has actaully become (or rather started out) incredible sophisticated and that a lot of programmers now have not been properly trained (be it by self study or a rigour CS program). And that flurry of programming books are more lke cookbooks and dont really *teach* anything anymore.

I find it rather hard to believe that Knuth's analysis of algorithms of Sorting and Searching have/will become out dated. I think his title the ART of COmputer Programming was always incredible ironic because he has done more than anyone else to turn into a real science, which it is now, and by which I mean that it has hypothesis that can now be tested. His book lay the foundation for it and I doubt any new programming book, short of specilized computer journal articles have done much to advance programming.

Re:OutDated?

[Asprin]

I think his title the ART of COmputer Programming was always incredible ironic because he has done more than anyone else to turn into a real science, which it is now, and by which I mean that it has hypothesis that can now be tested.

I disagree.

Real science has proper control groups and reproducible results. Programming has neither.




[/me grins, ducks and runs]

Re:OutDated?

[Oscaro]

Gnahhhrrrrg I keep hearing this argument over and over. But knowing how to do things right (and why) is the ONLY way to survive to new problems and situations that the STL does not solve.

That's one of the reason I hate Java. Its huge library lets you write programs without having to learn or understand what the hell you are doing.

Thanksfully, when I learned to program, I had to code my own hashtables.

Re:OutDated?

[H*(BZ_2)-Module]

I agree, and I think much of the misinterpretation comes because many are commenting on Knuth without ever having really read it. This comes from the introduction to TOACP.V3 2nd edition(which is from 1998 by the way, not so ancient):

The title "Sorting and Searching" may sound as if this book is only for those systems programmers who are concerned with the preperation of general-purpose sorting routines or applications to information retrieval. But in fact the area of sorting and searching provides an ideal framework for discussing a wide variety of important general issues: How are good algorithms discovered? How can algorithms and programs be improved? How can the efficiency of algorithms be analyzed mathematically? How can a person choose rationally between different algorithms for the same task? In what sense can algorithms be proved "best possible"? How does the theory of computing interact with practical considerations? How can external memories like tapes, drums, or disks be used efficiently with large databases? Indeed, I believe that virtually every important aspect of programming arises somewhere in the context of sorting and searching!

Note about the Oz language

[Anm]

For those curious why this books uses Oz as it's language of choice, it is one of the few, if not the only language, to support the many popular paradigms of programming:
* procedural, like C & BASIC
* object-oriented, like Ada & Java
* functional, like Scheme & Haskel
* declarative, like Prolog

It that way, this book is a good way to keep your mind open to different approaches to doing things.

Anm