Great Principles of Computing
Great Principles of Computing

Author: Peter J. Denning

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2015-01-16

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 026252712X

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A new framework for understanding computing: a coherent set of principles spanning technologies, domains, algorithms, architectures, and designs. Computing is usually viewed as a technology field that advances at the breakneck speed of Moore's Law. If we turn away even for a moment, we might miss a game-changing technological breakthrough or an earthshaking theoretical development. This book takes a different perspective, presenting computing as a science governed by fundamental principles that span all technologies. Computer science is a science of information processes. We need a new language to describe the science, and in this book Peter Denning and Craig Martell offer the great principles framework as just such a language. This is a book about the whole of computing—its algorithms, architectures, and designs. Denning and Martell divide the great principles of computing into six categories: communication, computation, coordination, recollection, evaluation, and design. They begin with an introduction to computing, its history, its many interactions with other fields, its domains of practice, and the structure of the great principles framework. They go on to examine the great principles in different areas: information, machines, programming, computation, memory, parallelism, queueing, and design. Finally, they apply the great principles to networking, the Internet in particular. Great Principles of Computing will be essential reading for professionals in science and engineering fields with a “computational” branch, for practitioners in computing who want overviews of less familiar areas of computer science, and for non-computer science majors who want an accessible entry way to the field.

The Elements of Computing Systems
The Elements of Computing Systems

Author: Noam Nisan

Publisher:

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 343

ISBN-13: 0262640686

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This title gives students an integrated and rigorous picture of applied computer science, as it comes to play in the construction of a simple yet powerful computer system.

Computational Thinking
Computational Thinking

Author: Peter J. Denning

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2019-05-14

Total Pages: 266

ISBN-13: 0262353423

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This pocket-sized introduction to computational thinking and problem-solving traces its genealogy centuries before the digital computer. A few decades into the digital era, scientists discovered that thinking in terms of computation made possible an entirely new way of organizing scientific investigation. Eventually, every field had a computational branch: computational physics, computational biology, computational sociology. More recently, “computational thinking” has become part of the K–12 curriculum. But what is computational thinking? This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series offers an accessible overview—tracing a genealogy that begins centuries before digital computers and portraying computational thinking as the pioneers of computing have described it. The authors explain that computational thinking (CT) is not a set of concepts for programming; it is a way of thinking that is honed through practice: the mental skills for designing computations to do jobs for us, and for explaining and interpreting the world as a complex of information processes. Mathematically trained experts (known as “computers”) who performed complex calculations as teams engaged in CT long before electronic computers. In each chapter, the author identify different dimensions of today's highly developed CT: • Computational Methods • Computing Machines • Computing Education • Software Engineering • Computational Science • Design Along the way, they debunk inflated claims for CT and computation while making clear the power of CT in all its complexity and multiplicity.

But how Do it Know?
But how Do it Know?

Author: J. Clark Scott

Publisher: John C Scott

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 223

ISBN-13: 0615303765

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This book thoroughly explains how computers work. It starts by fully examining a NAND gate, then goes on to build every piece and part of a small, fully operational computer. The necessity and use of codes is presented in parallel with the apprioriate pieces of hardware. The book can be easily understood by anyone whether they have a technical background or not. It could be used as a textbook.

Principles of Computer System Design
Principles of Computer System Design

Author: Jerome H. Saltzer

Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann

Published: 2009-05-21

Total Pages: 561

ISBN-13: 0080959423

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Principles of Computer System Design is the first textbook to take a principles-based approach to the computer system design. It identifies, examines, and illustrates fundamental concepts in computer system design that are common across operating systems, networks, database systems, distributed systems, programming languages, software engineering, security, fault tolerance, and architecture.Through carefully analyzed case studies from each of these disciplines, it demonstrates how to apply these concepts to tackle practical system design problems. To support the focus on design, the text identifies and explains abstractions that have proven successful in practice such as remote procedure call, client/service organization, file systems, data integrity, consistency, and authenticated messages. Most computer systems are built using a handful of such abstractions. The text describes how these abstractions are implemented, demonstrates how they are used in different systems, and prepares the reader to apply them in future designs.The book is recommended for junior and senior undergraduate students in Operating Systems, Distributed Systems, Distributed Operating Systems and/or Computer Systems Design courses; and professional computer systems designers. - Concepts of computer system design guided by fundamental principles - Cross-cutting approach that identifies abstractions common to networking, operating systems, transaction systems, distributed systems, architecture, and software engineering - Case studies that make the abstractions real: naming (DNS and the URL); file systems (the UNIX file system); clients and services (NFS); virtualization (virtual machines); scheduling (disk arms); security (TLS) - Numerous pseudocode fragments that provide concrete examples of abstract concepts - Extensive support. The authors and MIT OpenCourseWare provide on-line, free of charge, open educational resources, including additional chapters, course syllabi, board layouts and slides, lecture videos, and an archive of lecture schedules, class assignments, and design projects

Code
Code

Author: Charles Petzold

Publisher: Microsoft Press

Published: 2022-08-02

Total Pages: 563

ISBN-13: 0137909292

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The classic guide to how computers work, updated with new chapters and interactive graphics "For me, Code was a revelation. It was the first book about programming that spoke to me. It started with a story, and it built up, layer by layer, analogy by analogy, until I understood not just the Code, but the System. Code is a book that is as much about Systems Thinking and abstractions as it is about code and programming. Code teaches us how many unseen layers there are between the computer systems that we as users look at every day and the magical silicon rocks that we infused with lightning and taught to think." - Scott Hanselman, Partner Program Director, Microsoft, and host of Hanselminutes Computers are everywhere, most obviously in our laptops and smartphones, but also our cars, televisions, microwave ovens, alarm clocks, robot vacuum cleaners, and other smart appliances. Have you ever wondered what goes on inside these devices to make our lives easier but occasionally more infuriating? For more than 20 years, readers have delighted in Charles Petzold's illuminating story of the secret inner life of computers, and now he has revised it for this new age of computing. Cleverly illustrated and easy to understand, this is the book that cracks the mystery. You'll discover what flashlights, black cats, seesaws, and the ride of Paul Revere can teach you about computing, and how human ingenuity and our compulsion to communicate have shaped every electronic device we use. This new expanded edition explores more deeply the bit-by-bit and gate-by-gate construction of the heart of every smart device, the central processing unit that combines the simplest of basic operations to perform the most complex of feats. Petzold's companion website, CodeHiddenLanguage.com, uses animated graphics of key circuits in the book to make computers even easier to comprehend. In addition to substantially revised and updated content, new chapters include: Chapter 18: Let's Build a Clock! Chapter 21: The Arithmetic Logic Unit Chapter 22: Registers and Busses Chapter 23: CPU Control Signals Chapter 24: Jumps, Loops, and Calls Chapter 28: The World Brain From the simple ticking of clocks to the worldwide hum of the internet, Code reveals the essence of the digital revolution.

The Science of Computing
The Science of Computing

Author: Matti Tedre

Publisher: CRC Press

Published: 2014-12-03

Total Pages: 294

ISBN-13: 1482217694

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The identity of computing has been fiercely debated throughout its short history. Why is it still so hard to define computing as an academic discipline? Is computing a scientific, mathematical, or engineering discipline? By describing the mathematical, engineering, and scientific traditions of computing, The Science of Computing: Shaping a Discipline presents a rich picture of computing from the viewpoints of the field’s champions. The book helps readers understand the debates about computing as a discipline. It explains the context of computing’s central debates and portrays a broad perspective of the discipline. The book first looks at computing as a formal, theoretical discipline that is in many ways similar to mathematics, yet different in crucial ways. It traces a number of discussions about the theoretical nature of computing from the field’s intellectual origins in mathematical logic to modern views of the role of theory in computing. The book then explores the debates about computing as an engineering discipline, from the central technical innovations to the birth of the modern technical paradigm of computing to computing’s arrival as a new technical profession to software engineering gradually becoming an academic discipline. It presents arguments for and against the view of computing as engineering within the context of software production and analyzes the clash between the theoretical and practical mindsets. The book concludes with the view of computing as a science in its own right—not just as a tool for other sciences. It covers the early identity debates of computing, various views of computing as a science, and some famous characterizations of the discipline. It also addresses the experimental computer science debate, the view of computing as a natural science, and the algorithmization of sciences.

Computer Architecture
Computer Architecture

Author: Joseph D. Dumas II

Publisher: CRC Press

Published: 2018-10-03

Total Pages: 396

ISBN-13: 1351835165

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Future computing professionals must become familiar with historical computer architectures because many of the same or similar techniques are still being used and may persist well into the future. Computer Architecture: Fundamentals and Principles of Computer Design discusses the fundamental principles of computer design and performance enhancement that have proven effective and demonstrates how current trends in architecture and implementation rely on these principles while expanding upon them or applying them in new ways. Rather than focusing on a particular type of machine, this textbook explains concepts and techniques via examples drawn from various architectures and implementations. When necessary, the author creates simplified examples that clearly explain architectural and implementation features used across many computing platforms. Following an introduction that discusses the difference between architecture and implementation and how they relate, the next four chapters cover the architecture of traditional, single-processor systems that are still, after 60 years, the most widely used computing machines. The final two chapters explore approaches to adopt when single-processor systems do not reach desired levels of performance or are not suited for intended applications. Topics include parallel systems, major classifications of architectures, and characteristics of unconventional systems of the past, present, and future. This textbook provides students with a thorough grounding in what constitutes high performance and how to measure it, as well as a full familiarity in the fundamentals needed to make systems perform better. This knowledge enables them to understand and evaluate the many new systems they will encounter throughout their professional careers.

Once Upon an Algorithm
Once Upon an Algorithm

Author: Martin Erwig

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2017-08-11

Total Pages: 333

ISBN-13: 0262036630

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This easy-to-follow introduction to computer science reveals how familiar stories like Hansel and Gretel, Sherlock Holmes, and Harry Potter illustrate the concepts and everyday relevance of computing. Picture a computer scientist, staring at a screen and clicking away frantically on a keyboard, hacking into a system, or perhaps developing an app. Now delete that picture. In Once Upon an Algorithm, Martin Erwig explains computation as something that takes place beyond electronic computers, and computer science as the study of systematic problem solving. Erwig points out that many daily activities involve problem solving. Getting up in the morning, for example: You get up, take a shower, get dressed, eat breakfast. This simple daily routine solves a recurring problem through a series of well-defined steps. In computer science, such a routine is called an algorithm. Erwig illustrates a series of concepts in computing with examples from daily life and familiar stories. Hansel and Gretel, for example, execute an algorithm to get home from the forest. The movie Groundhog Day illustrates the problem of unsolvability; Sherlock Holmes manipulates data structures when solving a crime; the magic in Harry Potter’s world is understood through types and abstraction; and Indiana Jones demonstrates the complexity of searching. Along the way, Erwig also discusses representations and different ways to organize data; “intractable” problems; language, syntax, and ambiguity; control structures, loops, and the halting problem; different forms of recursion; and rules for finding errors in algorithms. This engaging book explains computation accessibly and shows its relevance to daily life. Something to think about next time we execute the algorithm of getting up in the morning.