The pearls of programming (Category Engineering)

The first edition of John Bentley’s book is almost complete. 40 Years ago, the year I was born. But I read the second edition, which came out in the early 2000s. It was a book that was different from the others - it taught you to think like an engineer, not just write code. The author of the book is a researcher from Bell Labs and Carnegie Mellon, co-author of the k-d tree algorithm and the improved quicksort. But he is best known for his column in Communications of the ACM, from which the book grew. It was in 1980- the age when 1 MB of memory was considered a luxury. Bentley wrote for practitioners who wanted not just “working code,” but a “beautiful solution.” He compared the algorithm to a pearl: the real problem is a grain of irritation, and the elegant solution is the result of patience and form.

Each chapter is a short essay with a task, reflection and conclusion. They cover the following topics:

• How to formulate a problem and look for aha!-solution;
• Assessment on a napkin, where the author talks about the evaluation of time and memory of algorithms literally on his fingers; Algorithmic tricks: sorting, sampling, search, optimization; How to write correct and understandable programs.

Interestingly, Bentley also wrote a sequel to More Programming Pearls, where he added the following themes. Philosophy of Engineering Thinking ("Confessions of the coder"); Small languages are forerunners of DSL and scripts within systems. Aphorisms and practical advice like “it is not a sin to worsen a bad program.”

If we talk about the importance of the book in ancient times, the author showed that programming is not a set of tricks, but the art of seeing the structure of the task. The book was once used in courses on algorithms and program design. Now most of the examples are outdated, but the approach is not.

As a result, John Bentley’s books are considered a treasure trove of knowledge for programmers. They bring together a generation of engineers. 1980Modern developers share common values - a passion for elegant solutions and a deep understanding of tasks. The Pearls of Programming still shine and continue to inspire new readers to find beauty in code.

#Engineering #Software #Architecture #SystemDesign