Reviews for Programming

The average rating for Programming based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-01-22 00:00:00 Petra Hartmann This one was a bit of a slog. Because it tries to be both a Mathematics and a Computer Science book, it skims a little over both, and I can't honestly recommend it unless you have a little background in both areas (which seems likely, if you are considering this). For instance, it uses the taxonomy of algebraic structures (monoids, groups, rings), with requirements on operations (associativity, commutativity, existence of identity, existence of inverses) to illustrate constructing a taxonomy of concepts that apply to data structures, but it doesn't dedicate much explanation to the mathematical structures, so you can only really follow if you already know them. In the other direction, it is also not a book from which to learn algorithms or C++ template metaprogramming techniques, at least from scratch, although you will learn something about those. If you already have some idea about how gcd, rotate, and partition work, then you should be reasonably well set to learn a lot more about possible implementation variations, with their respective asymptotic complexities and requirements on the types on which they operate. Some of the above might seem negative, but I simply want to point out what the book is not. What it is, is an excellent academic guide to carefully designing simple components, and building complex behaviour out of those, along with a catalogue of some useful such components. I learnt a lot about fundamentals such as partitioning, sorting, vectors, and deques. One key component that Stepanov has talked about a lot, but that didn't seem to get quite as much stress here, is his associative binary counter, absolutely essential for efficient iterative reduction. I found the description in this book finally made this idea click, even though I had seen it several times before.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-12-03 00:00:00 Thomas Geer This book was at hand in the best moment!