- Paperback: 496 pages
- Publisher: Addison Wesley; 2 edition (25 Mar 1992)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0201504014
- ISBN-13: 978-0201504019
- Product Dimensions: 23.1 x 18.8 x 2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 475,841 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
Providing a thorough, well-written and thoughtful study of the fundamental theoretical ideas of computing and examining how to design accurate and efficient algorithms, this book is ideal for an introductory course emphasizing theory rather than programming
From the Back Cover
From a review of the first edition:
‘This book is a veritable tour de force. Harel writes with uncommon verve, clarity and imagination.'
‘Through the use of tantalizing questions and aptly chosen and often amusing examples, the author transmits to the reader the excitement and intellectual satisfaction of computer science research. Without the use of formal mathematics and without any sacrifice of intellectual integrity, he conveys to the general reader the profound principles on which computer science is founded and which hitherto were only accessible in abstruse and esoteric textbooks and papers.'
‘This is scientific writing at its best.'
Dr Stan Scott, Queen's University Belfast. The Times Higher Education Supplement.
This book tells the story of the concepts, ideas, methods and results fundamental to computer science, in a form independent of the details of specific computers, languages and formalisms. It concerns the true 'spirit' of computers; with the 'recipes' that make them tick - their algorithms.
New to this edition
- Chapters on software engineering and on reactive systems.
- Thoroughly revised chapter on programming languages.
- New material on quantum and molecular computing.
- Whole text thoroughly updated to include new material on many topics, including abstract data types, the object-oriented paradigm, primality testing, and system verification and validation.
David Harel is Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science at the Weizmann Institute of Science. He is renowned for outstanding research in many areas of the field, and has recently been awarded the Israel Prize in Computer Science.
Yishai Feldman is on the faculty of the Efi Arazi School of Computer Science at the Interdisciplinary Centre, Herzliya. He specializes in the use of atificial-intelligence techniques in software engineering and its real-world applications. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
As the author says, the members of the research community of Computer
Science have done their discipline a disservice by not making any
special efforts to write accessible accounts of the field, as a result
of which the 'layman' still has little idea of what goes on 'under the
hood', so to say.
Science have done their discipline a disservice by not making any
special efforts to write accessible accounts of the field, as a result
of which the 'layman' still has little idea of what goes on 'under the
hood', so to say.
He has therefore undertaken the challenging task of presenting the basic
ideas underpinning Computer Science in a way that's easy for the general
reader to grasp. He sets out to present the essential notions of
Algorithms and data structures, Turing machines, Finite state machines,
Decidability, Computability, Complexity, NP-completeness, Correctness,
Parallel algorithms, Probabilistic algorithms, and more with a minimum
of mathematics and yet without sacrificing intellectual rigour - and
most admirably, succeeds in doing so.
David Harel is a big name in Theoretical Computer Science, one of the
leading researchers, and chairman of the Applied Mathematics and
Computer Science Department at the Weizmann Institute of Science.
What made my mind up about reading this book were the strongly encouraging
remarks on the back cover by Aho & Hopcroft, two of the foremost authors
and researchers in the field, who've written some great textbooks themselves.
This book presents all the basic fundamental ideas of the theory of computation,
using as little maths as possible. Yet, the intellectual rigour is never
compromised, which means that the reader truly gets a flavour of how a
Computer Scientist thinks, and how much fun it can be.
It also shows you how certain problems cannot be solved cheaply while others
cannot be solved at all (solved exactly, that is), no matter how much
'computing power' you have - ie theory proves the existence of certain
fundamental limits on the problems that we can hope to solve.
The writing is exceptionally good - like a true master of his subject,
Harel makes concepts seem easy to grasp, though you may find that later
on, you realize it was quite a subtle notion that was discussed.
The illustations are a great help, and occasional humour provides relief
from all the thinking you'll be doing!
Even though it's written for the general reader, it is also useful for
programmers, systems analysts and designers, software engineers and
students, since Harel cuts to the core of the concepts and offers
valuable insights into the theory that they might already know.
All in all, this book covers amazing ground and is a great introduction
to algorithms and the theory of computation. For probing further, you'll
need mathematics and textbooks, but this an excellent starting point.
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This book is good for the people who does not know anything about algorithmics. If you want to know more about algorithmics then talk to your tutor.
6 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
It's certainly true that this book goes into a lot of detail about computer science theory. Unfortunately, it is almost all theory, often with little attention paid to the relevance of the topics covered. It can also be rather heavy and hard to follow at times. Overall, I'd say it would be of interest to those studying computer science theory, but perhaps not of much value to those more interested in practical applications.
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