Paul McJones

Alexander A. Stepanov

New techniques for building more secure, reliable, high-performance software, from the renowned creator of the C++ STL • • A truly foundational book on the discipline of generic programming: how to write better software by mastering the development of abstract components. • Based on Alexander Stepanov's breakthrough lectures to programmers at Adobe and throughout Silicon Valley. • For serious software developers, architects, and engineers, the perfect complement to Knuth's theory and Stoustrup's practice. Elements of Programming is the next breakthrough book for serious practitioners seeking ways to write better software. In this book, Alexander Stepanov - the legendary architect and creator of the C++ Standard Template Libraries - focuses on the discipline that offers the greatest potential for improving contemporary software: the proper development of abstract components. Drawing on his enormously popular lectures to programmers at Adobe and throughout Silicon Valley, Stepanov illuminates crucial techniques of generic programming, specifically focusing on abstraction as the key to secure, reliable, and high-performance software. Together with co-author and ACM Fellow Paul McJones, Stepanov shows programmers how to use mathematics to compose reliable algorithms from components, and to design effective interfaces between algorithms and data structures. Topics covered in Elements of Programming include: transformations, associative operations, linear orderings, ordered algebraic structures, iterators, coordinates and coordinate structures, copying algorithms, rearrangement, sorting, and much more. This book requires an understanding of mathematics, but is consistently focused on identifying superior solutions to practical programming problems. Stepanov and McJones illuminate their concepts and techniques with C++ code, but the techniques are equally applicable to a wide range of contemporary object-oriented languages.

Elements of Programming

Daniel E. Rose

In this substantive yet accessible book, pioneering software designer Alexander Stepanov and his colleague Daniel Rose illuminate the principles of generic programming and the mathematical concept of abstraction on which it is based, helping you write code that is both simpler and more powerful. If you’re a reasonably proficient programmer who can think logically, you have all the background you’ll need. Stepanov and Rose introduce the relevant abstract algebra and number theory with exceptional clarity. They carefully explain the problems mathematicians first needed to solve, and then show how these mathematical solutions translate to generic programming and the creation of more effective and elegant code. To demonstrate the crucial role these mathematical principles play in many modern applications, the authors show how to use these results and generalized algorithms to implement a real-world public-key cryptosystem. As you read this book, you’ll master the thought processes necessary for effective programming and learn how to generalize narrowly conceived algorithms to widen their usefulness without losing efficiency. You’ll also gain deep insight into the value of mathematics to programming—insight that will prove invaluable no matter what programming languages and paradigms you use. You will learn about How to generalize a four thousand-year-old algorithm, demonstrating indispensable lessons about clarity and efficiency Ancient paradoxes, beautiful theorems, and the productive tension between continuous and discrete A simple algorithm for finding greatest common divisor (GCD) and modern abstractions that build on it Powerful mathematical approaches to abstraction How abstract algebra provides the idea at the heart of generic programming Axioms, proofs, theories, and models: using mathematical techniques to organize knowledge about your algorithms and data structures Surprising subtleties of simple programming tasks and what you can learn from them How practical implementations can exploit theoretical knowledge

From Mathematics to Generic Programming

This book is a great introduction to the core principles of generic programming for the experienced programmer. The authors work through examples showing how to analyze the requirements of an algorithm and make it as general as possible. The book includes several programming "laws" of particular interest to those building software components. The authors show how programmers can become more effective by learning about the idea of abstraction and the math it relies on. In an engaging and accessible fashion, they describe how these mathematical results were first discovered and are surprisingly useful in programming.

Alexander A. Stepanov

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