Computer Science Books

When I teach a course in basic numerical methods, the first material covered is the basics of the numerical representations inside computers, the problems of rounding error and the reasons why the basic laws of algebra do not apply in computing. The first examples that I use generally demonstrate how the associative, commutative and distributive laws can fail when they are performed by a computer.
This book begins with those issues and then explores them in the context of the IEEE floating point arithmetic standard. The treatment is extensive, going far beyond the basics one would normally cover in a numerical methods class. There is additional coverage of representations of numbers in the C programming language as well as how Sun has implemented rounding in the Java programming language and how it differs from the IEEE requirements. Some of the technical detail would be considered to be arcane by most people, but as the Intel floating point error demonstrated, no flaw in computer arithmetic or feature that gives "unusual" results can be considered harmless.
If you program solutions that are reliant on the accuracy of floating point operations, then this book is one you should study. Short and to the point, it contains complete explanations of some of the potential problems that you could encounter when performing floating point operations.

As the author of the book proclaims, the IEEE Floating Point Standard is one of the greatest achievements in computing. Whether you are an office clerk working with Excel, a computer programmer, or a theoretical mathematician, it is essential to fully understand how arithmetic on virtually every modern computer works. This book is very easy to read, and will help you understand what kind of precision you can expect from calculations and how to maximize this precision. The book will also demystify certain aspects of floating point arithmetic. For example, it will explain how the IEEE standard treats divisions by 0, infinity, and the special number NaN. Later chapters treat more advanced topics such as floating point implementation in the Intel family of microprocessors, problem conditioning, and stability of algorithms. There is also a brief chapter explaining the level of support provided for IEEE floating point standard in various programming languages such as C/C++, Fortran, MATLAB, and Java.

A computer scientist friend told me he was surprised to see a whole book devoted to the IEEE arithmetic standard. What surprised me was how much I enjoyed reading it, despite the great potential for boring details in such a topic. The author wastes no words and provides a wealth of examples and exercises. Unlike another reviewer, I have no connection with computer architecture: I'm "just a user" who writes Fortran programs. But I've always wondered just what the ubiquitous IEEE standard was all about, and this book satisfied my curiosity.

A remarkably good monograph. The worst thing about the book is its title, which conjures up images of tedious standards documents. The book covers many aspects of floating point calculations including their interaction with higher level language, hardware, numerical analysis, and intercomputer portability. The book is lively, clear, and informative; full of instructive examples. Best of all, it is not too long. If a book gives me one good idea, I consider it a good buy. This is a cornucopia of useful ideas. I teach computer architecture and my students will be seeing--this semester-- the results of my reading of this fine book.

I am learning Java and have briefly used two other books that just confused me by trying to explain Object Oriented Programming by showing examples of complex Java code. If you aren't familiar with OOP and want to learn Java, this is a great place to start.

This a very nice book to get your fundamentals and concepts of java. Do not expect to learn java syntax. A little bit of programming experience would be very helpful before buying this

If you are new to programming, don't buy this book. If, on the other hand, you understand basic programming techniques and ideas and want to enter the utopia of OOP in java, this is a great book! It clearly describes all of the OOP topics - inheritance, polymorphism, etc. It also includes nice discussions on networking with java and graphical interfaces. I also like that this book is to the point. While it is 300 pages, the writers don't go on and on about an idea. Rather, the authors' writing is very dense and requires interpretation and creativity on the reader's part. It will take several months for all of this information to really sink in.

The beauty of this book is not in it's coverage of OO programming or of Java, but how it melds the two together to bring a greater understanding of both to the novice reader. Each new topic covered builds on previous chapters, and the reader never feels like the authors assume any knowledge not covered in the text.

Code snippets are surprisingly concise, and free of annoying syntax errors that could confound the novice developer.

The book begins with several chapters introducing basic OO concepts and gradually introduces and increasing amount of Java code and delving into the Java API.

The middle portion of the book covering the core concepts of OO development (Inheritance, Encapsulation, and Polymorphism.) It then goes on to cover slightly more advanced concepts such as Exception Handing, socket programming with TCP/IP, JDBC, multi-threading.

The book does provide good coverage AWT model and GUI construction. Sadly, the it does not include coverage of Swing.

To date, it's the best ground up coverage I have found for both Java and OO basics. Experienced C/C++ developers may find it a bit slow paced.

For those interested in following up with a more advanced guide for Java 2 certification, I'd consider A Programmer's Guide to Java Certification by Khalid Azim Mughal, Rolf Rasmussen. It's a great certification prep and also a good core language reference.

This book is very well laid out. I am a teacher and would absolutely recommend this as an intro textbook to marine science. It contains all that you would need to know. great as a first year colledge text or even an advanced high school textbook.

Purchase and delivery were right on key. Very pleased with whole process. Item arrived in excellent condition. My daughter received a B+ on her first Oceanography College Exam (just points away from an A). That makes all the difference in the world....................Thanks.

This textbook is very well written. It is ubnderstandible to students and others of all ages and interests. It contains intersting color pictures and graphics about the subject material for each chapter. Each chapter also contains web links to a homepage that accompanies the book. The book is full of intersting personal stories, history, theory, and facts. Dr. Garrison and all who have contributed to this book have set the standard for textbooks and integrated learning for the next decade.

I took Tom Garrison's class at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa, CA. Wonderful class! He taught along with the book and every session was both insightful and interesting. Dr. Garrison is without a match in instructional etiquette and eloquence. Indeed, this book showcases his best work on the subject. Read the book... Be educated by the diagrams and charts... Be taken back at the amazing realms of life under the ocean... And most of all, be in awe of a marvelous earth (or "Oceanus") that is in great need of our consideration right now. Otherwise we end up dead like the aliens... Oops.. I hope I did't give a way the ending! If you have few bucks, come and take the class at OCC. You will be so glad you did. Just don't come in late through one of the side doors, or leave your cell phone on. He can't STAND those things! It drives him CRAZY!

In One Over X Williams takes us on a fantastical journey through time, space, and even reality. Following the main character(s?) through the enigmatic plot gives us a vicarious sense of omnipotence...or impotence, depending on our level of understanding. Truly one of the most innovative works of the 21st century, One Over X embodies a mode of storytelling that has yet been seen in modern literature. Williams forges new ground in this opening chapter of his masterpiece epic. Buy it. Read it. Love it.

If you like a book that makes you really think, that challenges your ideas about the past, present and future, try this book. It's part one of a series, and if the rest live up this first book, it'll be a great series! Lives are changed in a heartbeat, and you see different stages of the hero's life, like reflections in a splintered mirror. The characters are strong and well-defined. You won't forget them easily, and the plot carries you along in a rush of excitement to know what comes next. Can you follow the twists and turns of this one?

This has got to be one of the better books I have ever read; starts off on a level that is just a bit harder and more complex than what I was use to, but WOW! it really explodes in to a great read.

I recommend this book not to just SCIFI fans, but people who just want a great story that they will never forget.

To preface this, I'm not a huge fan of reading fiction books. I must be a product of the 5 second generation. But I was recommended this read from a friend. I started it and the characters were confusing at first. I couldn't figure out what Andy was doing and why. I almost gave up. But as the characters developed, I couldn't put it down. The shifting from Andy's world to the Wolfcats was intriging! It appears that the author has took great pains to create a solid body of charcters that kept me riveted. The author, Mr. Williams has written a fasinating book that I would recommend to all. It transcends science fiction. I tried to catagorize it, but it is impossible. Keep up the good work Mr. Williams. I hope you write many more!!!

Walter has written another down-to-earth design book. This book contains much theory, but not at the expense of practical design information. A good read here profits the analog designer; so says an analog designer of 40 years experience.

I've used 3 editions of the author's Op Amp Cookbook over the last 15 years, and found it to be an invaluable source of practical designs, accompanied by solid descriptions of the underlying principles. Based on that experience, I expected this book to be good. I am by no means disappointed.

It isn't a cookbook, although it does include many useful concrete design examples. It is more of an applications problem-solving guide. I've often found that some of the most useful op amp design information is buried in specific device datasheets and application notes, and have often found myself wishing someone would extract all of those nuggets, organize them, fill in the gaps, and publish them. As I read through this book, I found many such nuggets (primarily derived from Analog Devices' datasheets and app notes), which I had previously regarded as hidden treasure, uncovered only by tedious slogging through numerous datasheets. This is not, however, a re-packaging of previously published app notes. The chapters are comprehensive, well-written, and well-integrated.

Those interested in audio applications may remember that the original edition of the author's Op Amp Cookbook contained an extremely useful chapter on audio circuits. In the second edition, this material was extracted and published in a separate book, which (unfortunately) went out of print and has become hard to find. You will be happy to note that the new Applications Handbook has excellent coverage of audio op amp applications and design principles.

This is a great reference book. Starting with Op Amp Basics (chapter 1) and continuing on with Instrumentation amps, Op Amps used in data converters and signal conditioning, the book is full of valuable information. The book even covers PCB layout techniques and parasitic effects that become important in high speed systems and precision systems. There is also a history of the Op Amp which is interesting to read.
Anyone interested in analog circuit design in general, and op amps in particular will enjoy this book. It is a good reference for any engineer's bookshelf.

This is a great textbook for electrical engineers and hobbyists with fundamental knowledge of op-amp operation. The text is easy to read and explains concepts that are understandable for both the inexperienced and experienced engineer and also gives an excellent historical treatment of op-amp evolution. The mathematics involved is concise and to the point. This text gives engineers tools to understand the op-amp beyond the ideal models presented in basic circuit theory and electronics courses given in undergraduate programs. To apply op-amps properly, you need to go beyond the simplistic assuptions - this book will help you given you have an understanding of basic electronics design and analysis. I highly recommend having this book on your shelf for a reference.

As a researcher in the field, this book was immediately useful to me. Nearly every source code transformation and optimization technique that I'm aware of is present in this book, which often saves sifting through stacks of papers or looking for an elusive reference. If you're looking for a book to teach you the basics of how compilers work, it certainly is not the appropriate place to begin, but if you already have one good book on that then this book will make an excellent companion to it. It was slightly annoying that the book comes with two loose pages, one errata list and another to tape over a page early in the book, but that's what you get with 1st editions. Overall it's very good and the errors are very minor typos as opposed to factual goofs.

Randy Allen and Ken Kennedy are famous for their contributions
to compiler design theory. This book is a clearly written
discussion of the issues involving loop optimization and
dependence analysis. While this book also covers scalar
optimization issues, it is naturally complemented by Steven
S. Muchnick's excellent book "Advanced Compiler Design and
Implementation".

Randy Allen has spent many years implementing a variety of
compilers for supercomputers and hardware design languages.
While Ken Kennedy has published seminal theoretical work on
compiler optimization, he has also been involved in hands on
implementation as well. The experience of these two authors
results in a book which covers the huge body of knowledge in
compiler optimization and provides this knowledge in a
practical form that can be used by software engineers working
on compiler design.

For anyone working on modern compilers that require sophisticated
optimization features, this is an important reference work.
As with Muchnick's book, I have owned this since it was first
published. Rereading it reminds me of what a gem this work is.

Allen and Kennedy (A&K) haven't written your first compiler book. There's nothing about syntax analysis, code generation, instruction scheduling, or intermediate representations. You already know all that part, or you won't get very far in this book. Once you have the basics down, A&K is an irreplaceable reference.

It centers heavily on Fortran - even today, a mainstay of scientific computing and an active area of language development. Today, just as 50 years ago, the language's straightforward structure makes detailed behavioral analysis relatively easy. That's especially true in handling the array computations that soak up so many dozens (as of this writing) of CPU-hours per second on todays largest machines. There's far too much to summarize here, but A&K cover a huge range of processor features, including caches, multiple ALUs, vector units, chaining, and more. C code gets some attention as well, much needed because of the cultural weirdness around array handling in C. In every case, the focus is on the real-world kernels that need the help and on explicit ways of identifying and manipulating those code structures. As a result, the authors disregard the unreal situations that sometimes arise, e.g. in
"while (--n) *a++ = *b++ * *c++;"
Yes, the arrays pointed to by a, b, and c can overlap. But the pointer a can also point to a, b, c, or n, somewhere in its range - and likewise for pointers b and c, or all three. There is essentially no limit to how bad this can get, e.g when n is an alias for a, b, or c. Yes these are rare situations and generally errors - but I've seen on-the-fly code generation in production environments, so even the A&K example isn't as bad as it gets. I admit these to be pathological cases, though, better suited to an 'Obfuscated C' contest than to a compiler textbook.

The real disappointment comes from the section on compilation for Verilog and VHDL, and that disappointment may be a matter of emphasis only. The authors focus heavily on the strangeness of four-valued bits, which exist in Verilog and VHDL simulation, but not in synthesis. I.e., not in what really matters to a deployed application. The real challenge lies in compilation of C or Fortran into gates, a topic that the authors barely skim. That, however, is still a field of research exotica. It should be mentioned in a general book on compilation, as it is here, but awaits a text of its own.

All you processor designers out there should read the title a little differently. You should read this as "Modern Architectures for Optimizing Compilers," but you probably worked that out for yourself. If you have the luxury to define your own memory structure, all that analysis of memory access will give you plenty of ideas for your next ASIP. It will certainly give you lots of ways to quantify the behavior of your target applications, so you'll know just how to get the most MIPS per Mgate, including hard limits on how much hardware paralellism can actually do you any good.

All architects of performance computing systems, hardware or software, need this book. Even application developers can learn better ways to cooperate with the compilers and tools that run their codes. It has my very highest recommendation.

//wiredweird

This book is a very thorough look through all the ways you can extract and use parallelism and data dependencies advantageously in an optimized compiler, depending on your target architecture. As one example, this book contains every imaginable way to deal with arrays and loops and the maddeningly complex data dependancies that can result from their various interminglings. The book is refreshingly easy to read and contains pseudo-code and step-by-step examples everywhere you'd want to see them.

This was the third of three Goebbel War Year diaries that I bought and read. Although not the easiest prose to read -- in part they were not written necessarily to be read but to be perhaps used in a memoir that was destined to never be written -- this and the other two diaries are fascinating books for people fascinated by that era.

This diary ends on 9 April 45. According to the introduction he continued writing through at least 22 April 45 when he and his family moved into the bunker. It would be interesting to read any additional entries through 22 April -- and beyond if available -- as the situation became more hopeless. The book does, however, conclude with an epilogue that included his and his wife's last letters to his stepson, the only member of the Goebbels family to survive the war.

The term "Jekyll and Hyde" was easily applicable to the first diary and not as easily applicable to this diary. However there term is somewhat applicable. The man -- despite the obvious problems at the fronts -- still has hope. Maybe the hope is flickering but he still has hope. He does realize that military victory is now unattainable but maybe if the military can score one or two major successes they can finagle some kind of a negotiated settlement more favorable than "unconditional surrender". This thought appears to be running through the Nazi government during the February - April 45 timeframe covered in the book.

Whereas in the previous two diaries great words are written about great events that resulted in great victories, this time Goebbels write great words about not so great events. The brave German military puts up great resistance to stall an American, or a British, or a Soviet offensive. Nazi forces counterattack and push eight or ten or twelve kilometers. The war is not lost yet! Why are such events important? The longer the war goes on and the more casualties are inflicted upon the enemy maybe the people in the West will grow tired and more conciliatory towards a less than complete defeat of Germany. Or maybe by stretching out the war maybe the Nazis can finagle a separate settlement with the Soviets. Or maybe the western Allies will realize how dangerous the Soviets are -- who are, after all, spreading its Bolshevic tentacles over eastern Europe contrary to previous agreements. Goebbels is hoping that something -- anything -- will happen to preclude what looks like an inevitable defeat.

Reading the book one realizes how little hold the government actually had over the people. Even in the previous diaries there were criticisms of the government that was voiced by the people that Goebbels acknowledged. Of course, in 1945 there was little the government could do. The people were unhappy about the air raids for which the government generally and the Luftwaffe specifically had no answer. Althought Goebbels still disliked several of his counterparts in the government like Foreign Minister Ribbentrop his greatest condemnation falls upon Hermann Goering. He feels Goering's corrupt and inept leadership of the Luftwaffe is the main reason why victory that appeared so close in 1941 is now so far away in 1945. Yet he still writes that even as late as April 1945 if there are major personnel changes in the military and the government National Socialism could still be saved in Germany.

He is not beyond criticizing is Fuehrer. He still thinks Adolf Hitler himself can do no wrong. The problem is that Adolf Hitler has surrounded himself with wrong people and for whatever reasons will not get rid of them. Although Hitler agrees with almost all of Goebbels suggestions for fixing the government Hitler does virtually nothing. Goebbels is frustrated.

It is also interesting how his attitude toward the inferior Slavic Soviet forces has evolved. He is still convinced the Soviet military is -- man for man -- inferior to the German soldier. But the Germans are being overwhelmed by superior numbers and machinery being thrown at them by the Allies. But he is impressed with Stalin. Once upon a time he and others had scorned Stalin for the massive purges of the Soviet military in the late 1930s. At one point in the book he relates reviewing the biographies of the leading Soviet military leaders. The Soviet military leaders were all under the age of 50 and were die-hard Bolshevics who would do anything to win. This was a big reason why the Soviets survived the seemingly hopeless situation in 1941 and why they were winning the war in 1945. In contrast, the German military leaders were old and had no deep political or philosopical ties to National Socialism. If they won the war, great. If not, oh well. Goebbels concludes that maybe Stalin was not so crazy for purging his military and after the war the Nazis should do likewise with their military.

The popular perception of Hitler and his entourage is they were living in an insane fantasy land as the Soviets closed in on Berlin. Unfortunately, the last three weeks of Goebbels life were missing so maybe there was some degree of truth to that perception. But in the book you see a somewhat different view. Yes the war was going bad but he had to grasp at some kind of hope -- whatever that may be. Goebbels recognized that if the end is near it would be a catastrophic defeat. Therefore his only hope was to stretch the war out as long as possible and hope for some miracle. Hitler himself is not so much a ranting, raving lunatic (many of the accounts of Hitler's final days were written by witnesses who were the target of his anger and thus had a reason for depicting his as insane) as a man who is angry with his generals but is resigned to his fate.

As we know, neither Joseph Goebbels nor his Fuehrer survived the war and neither man was able to write their autobiographies explaining why they did what they did. Perhaps the closest thing to a Hitler autobiography would be Mein Kampf that depicted his early life and early political battles through 1924 and his "Table Talks" -- a series of monologues recorded between 1942 and 1944. For his Propaganda Minister these diaries is the closest we can probably hope to find to an autobiography. These "autobiographies" may be distorted but they are distorted in their own words.

In the closing weeks of the European component of WWII, Goebbels's attitude towards the Jews remained unchanged: (April 3, 1945): "The Jews have applied for a seat at the San Francisco Conference. It is characteristic that their main demand is that anti-Semitism be forbidden throughout the world. Typically, having committed the most terrible crimes against mankind, the Jews would now like mankind to be forbidden even to think about them." (p. 305).

However, Jews were not the only scapegoats; nor were they the only ones blamed for starting WWII. On March 18, 1945, Goebbels referred to Poland's losses to, of all things, "...Polish arrogance in August 1939..." and having failed to accept the "...extraordinarily generous [German] proposals at that time..." [Sic!] (p. 165). Goebbels engages in an even more overt blame-the-victim mentality towards Poles when, in his entry of March 30, 1945, he quips about: "...Poland, which began this war anyway..." (p. 274). In addition, on March 26, 1945, Goebbels mentioned "...Poland and Russia, the most primitive countries of Europe." (p. 233).

In other contexts, Goebbels had various scapegoats coming in handy, as summarized by historian Trevor-Roper: "...castigating whole classes, whole groups, whole nations: the miserable bourgeoisie, the generals, the Luftwaffe, the Churches, the Jews, the Swiss, the Swedes." (P. xxx).

It is both sobering and sad to realize that someone of Goebbels's character had a much better grasp of Soviet intentions that did Churchill or Roosevelt. Goebbels even quoted a British newspaper in this regard (March 3, 1945): The Daily Mail just made a truly sensational admission; it says that for two years now I have been the only person to analyze the case of Poland correctly and forecast accurately the way in which England would succumb to the Kremlin. Churchill comes in for criticism of rare severity." (p. 30).

In stark contrast to the appeasing attitude of western politicians towards "Uncle Joe" Stalin, Goebbels commented (March 9, 1945): "In the region which was formerly Poland the Soviets are pursuing their bloody reign of terror undeterred by Anglo-American protests. They take not the smallest notice of Churchill and Roosevelt. A new wave of arrests is sweeping across the country, the victims being mainly the Polish nationalists." (p. 88). Also (March 21, 1945): "The Soviets are going quietly on deporting Poles to the interior of Russia. They take not the smallest notice of the Anglo-Americans." (p. 190).

The situation under which Poles found themselves was obvious to Goebbels: (March 11, 1945): "Stalin is firmly determined--and no one can understand this--to negotiate with no one over the Polish question. How rigidly he has already imposed his will is evident from the fact that Mikolajczyk, the former Polish Minister-in-exile, now proposes to submit to the dictates of the Kremlin. Under protest admittedly, but what value are such protests today? Anyway the only choice for the Poles is either to be exterminated by force or to bow the Kremlin." (p. 100).

Goebbels saw right through the Communist smear campaign directed against non-Communist regimes (March 19, 1945): "It is well known that Communists always call everything fascist that is not Communist and, under the guise of a struggle against fascism, exterminate all forces opposing bolshevization of a country in which they have any influence...According to Pravda, the London Poles are a gang of degenerate landowners rejected by the Polish people. In short, Pravda's general tone is one hardly customary even between enemies, let alone between allies." (p. 172).

On March 22, 1945, Goebbels discussed the Soviet-staged trials, in Bulgaria, of two witnesses who had been present, two years earlier, at the site of the Katyn massacre (p. 206). The two priests were tearfully forced to recant their blame of the Soviets.

Goebbels repeats certain themes throughout this latest set of his diaries. He seems obsessed with the incipient British loss of their worldwide colonial empire, and that regardless of the outcome of the war. He thinks that the new German jets can enjoy a 5:1 kill ratio over the Allied propeller-driven planes, but recognizes that Germany can produce far too few jets to make a realistic impact in the air war. He repeatedly suggests that the Germans should have withdrawn from the Geneva Convention. This would have allowed the Germans to kill Allied POWs in reprisal for the German civilians killed by Allied bombing raids. It also would make the German soldiers fight harder, aware of the fact that the Allies would reciprocally take no prisoners.

Having just been through the Iraq war, some of Goebbels musings resonate peculiarly with some of the more grandiose statements that came out of the end of that particular conflict.

It is very hard to judge Goebbels as a man from these pages. Even given that they were unedited, this was intended to be the record of a Reich that won the war. This is not a private journal in the sense that he was always intending to rewrite it for history-- and presumably he was smart enough to realize that if he was still around to rewrite it for history then the Hitler regime had in some measure made it successfully through the war.

What is interesting for the armchair historian are the places where his real feelings break through the propaganda. Presumably these are the moments that would have been edited out for publication. At times he whines about other nazi officials, at another point he sarcastically remarks that a plan of Hitler's would have been brilliant had it had any chance at all of succeeding.

He was clearly a bright man (if an evil one), and it is interesting to watch his mind work in what were obviously (even to him) the final days.

I didn't really know how to rate this book. As a diary? As history? Should I have rated Trevor-Roper's editing?

So I rated it a "5", but it hardly matters. I don't think anyone will read Goebbel's diary because it's "popular."

My reactions to this book were mixed. I found my opinion of Goebbels as a man and a mind considerably lower after finishing the book. Yes, I knew beforehand that he was a recalcitrant Nazi and mass-murderer. On the other hand, I've read Albert Speer's books, and he always spoke admiringly of Goebbel's intellect. I respect Speer's intellect highly, but I must say that he was wrong about Goebbels. Goebbels in this diary is an ugly, sordid, vicious little man, repeating the same tired mantras again and again, transparently trying to varnish his image for history, and sniping and gossipping about everyone around him. (But then, Speer found himself to be dreadfully wrong about Hitler, too.)

Intellect? I hardly found myself able to discern one in this mess.

Still, I'm glad I read the book. It adds another dimension to my understanding of the Third Reich, and serves as a counterbalance to the other accounts I've read.

But I wouldn't call the experience of reading this book enjoyable.

I have spent the last six months of my life learning as much as I can about parsing. I own half a shelf of compiler books, and I have flipped through the pages of half a shelf more.

No other book approaches the clarity and comprehensiveness of this book.

When you try to read most literature about parsing, authors tend to throw around a lot of terms without explaining them. What exactly is a "deterministic" parser, a "canonical" parser, a "directional" parser? Grune and Jacobs explain every one of these distinctions lucidly, and put all known algorithms in context of how they compare to the rest of the field. How do the algorithms compare in what languages they can parse, how fast they are, and how much of the work can be done ahead of time? The book addresses all of these trade-offs, but doesn't stop at asymptotic complexity: in chapter 17 (the comparative survey), they note that general parsers may be a factor of ten or so slower than deterministic methods, even though both are linear. This high-level overview and comparative survey are something I was desperately seeking, and I've found nothing comparable to them anywhere.

There is also a lot of important background information that other authors tend to assume you know: for example, did you know that when authors say "LL" they almost always mean "strong LL" unless they specifically say "full LL?" Are you totally clear on the difference between strong LL, simple LL, and full LL? If you're not sure, Grune and Jacobs will give you all the explanation you need to fully understand.

This book strikes a perfect balance between breadth and depth. All significant algorithms are covered, most with enough detail to fully understand and implement them, but Grune and Jacobs punt on less practical material like proofs or rigorous formal descriptions. That information is never more than a citation away though, thanks to the 417-entry annotated bibliography, which gives you not only references to source material but a paragraph or two describing their key results.

I couldn't be happier about adding this book to my bookshelf of compiler books -- it quickly became the book I refer to most often, and I thank Grune and Jacobs for this superb guide to this vast and diverse field of computer science.

After searching all over for a way to understand the translation field and looking the dragon book and all, this is a great find. I am a practicing software engineer with training in electronics (good old forgotten days) and did not like math classes. This book is a great way to make this topic approachable for a practicing industry developer. Admittedly is a difficult read but if you want to understand something it needs the effort. If you cannot read the # * + etc in the other compiler books this books makes it comprehendible.

The first edition is available at Grune's web site but this very much expanded second edition is not.

just google the first author. he has the pdf version online.

Best book in the area I have read for some time. The AI chapter is controversial but definitely worth reading. As for the rest, I enjoyed enormously. Don't miss it.

Floridi's book is a technical tour de force that seeks to explore some of the philosophical implications of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) in the context of a rigorous and detailed examination of areas of technology such as the digital revolution, databases and hypertext, the internet and artificial intelligence. The strength of the book is his grasp of the technology. Over and over again he demonstrates a remarkable technical proficiency as he discusses areas as diverse as computer architecture, database design, network protocols and many others.

From "Ends and Means", The Journal of the University of Aberdeen Centre for Philosophy Technology and Society.

Philosophy and Computing: An Introduction is Luciano Floridi's wide-ranging account of the philosophical aspects of computers, the Internet, and digitisation in general. It is philosophy in quite a broad sense of the term, including both some relatively technical (for an introduction) sections on elementary computation theory, and many observations of a more sociological nature, examining how computer use is changing our ways of thinking and working.

New Scientist, 9 October 1999, p. 59 "Must read... An impressive introductory text. Floridi bravely categorises artificial intelligence, and deals with cyborgs and robots". Kevin Warwick, Professor of Cybernetics, University of Reading, UK

E' un libro molto ben fatto, che tratta in modo esaustivo tutte
le principali caratteristiche delle strutture implementate in C++.
L'unico difetto - non imputabile all'Autore - sta nel linguaggio
adoperato, oramai piuttoso obsoleto e lontano dall'attuale standard ANSI.
Perchè la Wiley non invita il dr Flamig a pubblicare un aggiornamento dei suoi ottimi libri? Sono sicuro che diventerebbe un best-seller!
In ogni modo, anche cosi' è altamente raccomandabile ai programmatori di ogni livello, perchè contiene un'infinita' di
varianti e suggerimenti e,soprattutto, il codice completo che mostra come realizzare in pratica quanto appreso nella teoria.
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It contains the most simple and basic code that any one can handle, even if you are not very skillful with C, you can follow the text. It is very well developed and for begginers is just great.

Practical data structure in C++ is very impressive to me... I have some problems - the source codes sltst.cpp etc.. in chapter 8 are not executed. In BC 3.1, they work well. but by compiler MFC 4.1 I have used, execution error occurs. I guess member function Next() in slist.h cannot return point to next pointer. Why? What's trouble-shooting to this problem? Could you give the answer ASAP ? I'm in a big hurry..

All the code in "Practical Data Structures in C++" is provided to the student/programmer and not left as an exercise to the "student." I found the book "very" useful after I had taken an introductory "Data Structures" course. I purchased this book at the time where templetes were not implemented in Microsoft Visual C++; therefore, I do not know whether the included code will build with any specific compiler though I suspect that it will build with the latest MS compiler and the Borland products. This book is for the "working programmer" who has not looked at a topic since the required Data Structures course work. This book provides a very good review as well as complete example(s) of working "code snipets."