Elements of Programming

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.

Alexander Stepanov studied mathematics at Moscow State University from 1967 to 1972. He has been programming since 1972: first in the Soviet Union and, after emigrating in 1977, in the United States. He has programmed operating systems, programming tools, compilers, and libraries. His work on foundations of programming has been supported by GE, Brooklyn Polytechnic, AT&T,HP, SGI, and, since 2002, Adobe. In 1995 he received the Dr. Dobb’s Journal Excellence in Programming Award for the design of the C++ Standard Template Library.

Paul McJones studied engineering mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1967 to 1971. He has been programming since 1967 in the areas of operating systems, programming environments, transaction processing systems, and enterprise and consumer applications. He has been employed by the University of California, IBM, Xerox, Tandem, DEC, and, since 2003, Adobe. In 1982 he and his coauthors received the ACM Programming Systems and Languages Paper Award for their paper “The Recovery Manager of the System R Database Manager.”