book cover

Programming Pearls,
      Second Edition

by Jon Bentley.

Addison-Wesley, Inc., 2000.
ISBN 0-201-65788-0.
239 + xi pp.   $24.95

This book is a collection of essays about a glamorous aspect of software: programming pearls whose origins lie beyond solid engineering, in the realm of insight and creativity. This book provides a guide for both students and experienced programmers about how to design and create programs, and how to think about programming.

The book is full of small case studies, real examples, and interesting exercises for learning about how to program. This web page contains samples from the whole work for you to investigate. For teachers, the links below lead to some of the central material suitable for classroom use.

Steve McConnell describes the book as ``a celebration of design in the small''. Browse this site to sample it yourself.

[new] What's new on this web site?

From The Book
Table of Contents
Preface
Part I: Preliminaries
  Column 1: Cracking the Oyster
  Column 2: Aha! Algorithms [Sketch]
  Column 4: Writing Correct Programs [Sketch]
  Column 5: A Small Matter of Programming [Sketch]
Part II: Performance
  Column 7: The Back of the Envelope
  Column 8: Algorithm Design Techniques [Sketch]
Part III: The Product
  Column 14: Heaps [Sketch]
  Column 15: Strings of Pearls
Epilog to the First Edition
Epilog to the Second Edition
Appendix 2: An Estimation Quiz
Appendix 3: Cost Models for Time and Space
Appendix 4: Rules for Code Tuning
Solutions for Column 1   Column 5   Column 7   Column 15
Index

About The Book
Why a Second Edition?
To Readers of the First Edition
About the First Edition
Errata

Supporting Material
Source Code
Web Sites Relevant to the Book
Animation of Sorting Algorithms
Tricks of the Trade
Teaching Material

Other Links

Copyright © 1999 Lucent Technologies. All rights reserved. Thu 19 Oct 2000