Digital library
Textbooks, references and open learning resources.
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Think Data Structures: Algorithms and Information Retrieval in Java
Allen Downey · Green Tea Press · 2016
Data structures and algorithms are among the most important inventions of the last 50 years, and they are fundamental tools software engineers need to know. But in my opinion, most of the books on these topics are too theoretical, too big, and too bottom-up: Too theoretical: Mathematical analysis of algorithms is based on simplifying assumptions that limit its usefulness in practice. Many presentations of this topic gloss over the simplifications and focus on the math. In this book I present the most practical subset of this material and eliminate the rest. Too big: Most books on these topics are at least 500 pages, and some are more than 1000. By focusing on the topics I think are most useful for software engineers, I kept this book under 250 pages. Too bottom-up: Many data structures books focus on how data structures work (the implementations), with less about how to use them (the interfaces). In this book, I go “top down”, starting with the interfaces. Readers learn to use the structures in the Java Collections Framework before getting into the details of how they work. Finally, many present this material out of context and without motivation: it’s just one damn data structure after another! I try to alleviate the boredom by organizing the topics around an application—web search—that uses data structures extensively, and is an interesting and important topic in its own right. This application also motivates some topics that are not usually covered in an introductory data structures class, including persistent data structures, with Redis, and streaming algorithms. This book also presents basic aspects of software engineering practice, including version control and unit testing. Each chapter ends with an exercise that allows readers to apply what they have learned. Each exercise includes automated tests that check the solution. And for most exercises, I present my solution at the beginning of the next chapter. This book is intended for college students in computer
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How to Think Like a Computer Scientist: C Version
Allen Downey; Thomas Scheffler · Green Tea Press · 1999
The goal of this book is to teach you to think like a computer scientist. I like the way computer scientists think because they combine some of the best features of Mathematics, Engineering, and Natural Science. Like mathematicians, computer scientists use formal languages to denote ideas (specifically computations). Like engineers, they design things, assembling components into systems and evaluating trade offs among alternatives. Like scientists, they observe the behavior of complex systems, form hypotheses, and test predictions.The single most important skill for a computer scientist is problem-solving. By that I mean the ability to formulate problems, think creatively about solutions, and express a solution clearly and accurately. As it turns out, the process of learning to program is an excellent opportunity to practice problem-solving skills. That’s why this chapter is called “The way of the program.”
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How to Think Like a Computer Scientist: C++ Version
Allen Downey · Green Tea Press · 2012
The goal of this book is to teach you to think like a computer scientist. I like the way computer scientists think because they combine some of the best features of Mathematics, Engineering, and Natural Science. Like mathematicians,computer scientists use formal languages to denote ideas (specifically computations). Like engineers, they design things, assembling components into systems and evaluating trade offs among alternatives. Like scientists, they observe the behavior of complex systems, form hypotheses, and test predictions.The single most important skill for a computer scientist is problem-solving. By that I mean the ability to formulate problems, think creatively about solutions, and express a solution clearly and accurately. As it turns out, the process of learning to program is an excellent opportunity to practice problem-solving skills. That’s why this chapter is called “The way of the program.”
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Object-Oriented Reengineering Patterns
Serge Demeyer; Stéphane Ducasse; Oscar Nierstrasz · Stéphane Ducasse · 2008
The documentation is missing or obsolete, and the original developers have departed. Your team has limited understanding of the system, and unit tests are missing for many, if not all, of the components. When you fix a bug in one place, another bug pops up somewhere else in the system. Long rebuild times make any change difficult. All of these are signs of software that is close to the breaking point. Many systems can be upgraded or simply thrown away if they no longer serve their purpose. Legacy software, however, is crucial for operations and needs to be continually available and upgraded. How can you reduce the complexity of a legacy system sufficiently so that it can continue to be used and adapted at acceptable cost? Based on the authors' industrial experiences, this book is a guide on how to reverse engineer legacy systems to understand their problems, and then reengineer those systems to meet new demands. Patterns are used to clarify and explain the process of understanding large code bases, hence transforming them to meet new requirements. The key insight is that the right design and organization of your system is not something that can be evident from the initial requirements alone, but rather as a consequence of understanding how these requirements evolve.
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Implementing a One Address CPU in Logisim
Charles Kann · A.T. Still University · 2016
Most computer users have an incorrect, but useful, cognitive metaphor for computers in which the user says (or types or clicks) something and a mystical, almost intelligent or magical, behavior happens. It is not a stretch to describe computer users as believing computers follow the laws of magic, where some magic incantation is entered, and the computer responds with an expected, but magical, behavior. This magic computer does not actually exist. In reality computer are machines, and every action a computer performs reduces to a set of mechanical operations. In fact the first complete definition of a working computer was a mechanical machine designed by Charles Babbage in 1834, and would have run on steam power. Probably the biggest success of Computer Science (CS) in the 20th century was the development of abstractions that hide the mechanical nature of computers. The fact that average people use computers without ever considering that they are mechanistic is a triumph of CS designers. This purpose of this monograph is to break the abstract understanding of a computer, and to explain a computer's behavior in completely in mechanistic terms. It will deal specifically with the Central Processing Unit (CPU) of the computer, as this is where the magic happens. All other parts of a computer can be seen as just providing information for the CPU to operate on. This monograph will deal with a specific type of CPU, a one-address CPU, and will explain this CPU using only standard gates, specifically AND, OR, NOT, NAND and XOR gates, and 4 basic Integrated Circuits (ICs), the Decoder, Multiplexer, Adder, and Flip Flop. All of these gates and components can be described as mechanical transformations of input data to output data, and the overall CPU can then be seen as a mechanical device.
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A Byte of Python
Swaroop H · Swaroop C H · 2013
"A Byte of Python" is a free book on programming using the Python language. It serves as a tutorial or guide to the Python language for a beginner audience. If all you know about computers is how to save text files, then this is the book for you.
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Embedded Controllers Using C and Arduino
James Fiore · dissidents · 2018
This text is designed to introduce and expand upon material related to the C programming language and embedded controllers, and specifically, the Arduino development system and associated Atmel ATmega microcontrollers. It is intended to fit the time constraints of a typical 3 to 4 credit hour course for electrical engineering technology and computer engineering technology programs, although it could also fit the needs of a hardware-oriented course in computer science. As such, the text does not attempt to cover every aspect of the C language, the Arduino system or Atmel AVR microcontrollers. The first section deals with the C language itself. It is assumed that the student is a relative newcomer to the C language but has some experience with another high level language, for example, Python. This means concepts such as conditionals and iteration are already familiar and the student can get up and running fairly quickly. From there, the Arduino development environment is examined. Unlike the myriad Arduino books now available, this text does not simply rely on the Arduino libraries. As convenient as the libraries may be, there are other, sometimes far more efficient, ways of programming the boards. Many of the chapters examine library source code to see “what's under the hood”. This more generic approach means it will be easier for the student to use other processors and development systems instead of being tightly tied to one platform. There is a lab manual for this textbook.
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High Performance Computing
Charles Severance; Kevin Dowd · OpenStax CNX · 2010
The purpose of this book is to teach new programmers and scientists about the basics of High Performance Computing. Too many parallel and high performance computing books focus on the architecture, theory and computer science surrounding HPC. This book speaks to the practicing chemistry student, physicist, or biologist who need to write and run their programs as part of their research.
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Enterprise Pharo a Web Perspective
Square Bracket Associates · 2016
Enterprise Pharo is the third volume of the series, following Pharo by Example and Deep into Pharo. It covers enterprise libraries and frameworks, and in particular those useful for doing web development. The book is structured in five parts. The first part talks about simple web applications, starting with a minimal web application in chapter 1 on Teapot and then a tutorial on building a more complete web application in chapter 2. Part two deals with HTTP support in Pharo, talking about character encoding in chapter 3, about using Pharo as an HTTP Client (chapter 4) and server (chapter 5), and about using WebSockets (chapter 6).In the third part we discuss the handling of data for the application. Firstly we treat data that is in the form of comma-separated values (CSV) in chapter 7. Secondly and thirdly, we treat JSON (chapter 8) and its Smalltalk counterpart STON (chapter 9). Fourthly, serialization and deserialization of object graphs with Fuel is treated in chapter 10. Lastly, we discuss the Voyage persistence framework and persisting to MongoDB databases in chapter 11. Part four deals with the presentation layer. Chapter 12 shows how to use Mustache templates in Pharo, and chapter 13 talks about programmatic generationof CSS files. The documentation of applications could be written in Pillar, which is presented in chapter 14. How to generate PDF files from the application with Artefact is shown in chapter 15. The fifth part deals with deploying the web application. This is explained in chapter 16 that talks not only about how to build and run the application, but also other important topics like monitoring.
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The Spec UI framework
Johan Fabry; Stephane Ducasse · Square Bracket Associates · 2017
Spec is the default UI framework for Pharo. To build UI's in Spec existing widgets or even complete UI's are reused and configured to form a new UI. This book first shows the basics of Spec and how it enables reuse of UIs. It then treats UI layout in detail before moving on to explaining the management of windows. Some of the more advanced widgets are also discussed as well as the dynamic features of Spec. Lastly, the book also contains a chapter with tips and tricks.
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Aprendizaje Colaborativo Apoyado por Computador
César Collazos; Jaime Muñoz; Yosly Hernández · LATIn Project · 2014
Comunidad creada para compartir experiencias en torno al uso de Tecnologías de la Información como apoyo a procesos de enseñanza-aprendizaje usando modelos de aprendizaje colaborativo
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Introduction to MIPS Assembly Language Programming
Charles Kann · Charles W. Kann III · 2016
This book was written to introduce students to assembly language programming in MIPS. As with all assemblylanguage programming texts, it covers basic operators and instructions, subprogram calling, loading andstoring memory, program control, and the conversion of the assembly language program into machine code. However this book was not written simply as a book on assembly language programming. The larger purposeof this text is to show how concepts in Higher Level Languages (HLL), such as Java or C/C++, arerepresented in assembly. By showing how program constructs from these HLL map into assembly, theconcepts will be easier to understand and use when the programmer implements programs in languages likeJava or C/C++. Concepts such as references and variables, registers, binary and Boolean operations, subprogram execution, memory types (heap, stack, and static), and array processing are covered to clarify thedecisions made when implementing HLL. Program control is presented using a mapping from structuredprograms in pseudo code to help students understand structured programming, and why it exists. Memoryaccess in assembly is presented to high light the difference between references (pointers) and values, and howthese impact HLL. This book has numerous code examples, and many problems at the end of each chapter, and it is appropriate for a class in Assembly Language, or as a extra resource for a class in Computer Organization.
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Combinatorics
Joy Morris · Joy Morris · 2022
Combinatorics is an upper-level introductory course in enumeration, graph theory, and design theory.
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Eloquent JavaScript: A Modern Introduction to Programming
Marijn Haverbeke · No Starch Press · 2014
JavaScript lies at the heart of almost every modern web application, from social apps like Twitter to browser-based game frameworks like Phaser and Babylon. Though simple for beginners to pick up and play with, JavaScript is a flexible, complex language that you can use to build full-scale applications. This much anticipated and thoroughly revised third edition of Eloquent JavaScript dives deep into the JavaScript language to show you how to write beautiful, effective code. It has been updated to reflect the current state of Java¬Script and web browsers and includes brand-new material on features like class notation, arrow functions, iterators, async functions, template strings, and block scope. A host of new exercises have also been added to test your skills and keep you on track.
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Relational Databases and Microsoft Access 365
Ron McFadyen · Ron McFadyen · 2021
This text is a free introductory text that introduces MS Access and relational database design. The motivation is to support an introductory database system course which, to the student, is either a service course providing an introduction to database concepts, or, as a prerequisite for more advanced study in the field.
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Java with BlueJ Part 2
Ron McFadyen · Ron McFadyen · 2016
This book is Part II of a two-part set that introduces the Java programming language. The text assumes the student will be using the BlueJ development environment and provides some introductory BlueJ material. Our experience has been that BlueJ is easy to learn and provides a good programming environment for the beginner programmer.
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Java with BlueJ
Ron McFadyen · Ron McFadyen · 2016
This book is Part I of a two-part set that introduces the Java programming language. The text assumes the student will be using the BlueJ development environment and provides some introductory BlueJ material. Our experience has been that BlueJ is easy to learn and provides a good programming environment for the beginner programmer.
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Nature of Geographic Information Systems
David DiBiase · BCcampus · 2014
The purpose of this text is to promote understanding of the Geographic Information Science and Technology enterprise (GIS&T, also known as “geospatial”).
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Introduction to Computer Graphics
David Eck · David J. Eck · 2016
Introduction to Computer Graphics is a free, on-line textbook covering the fundamentals of computer graphics and computer graphics programming. This book is meant for use as a textbook in a one-semester course that would typically be taken by undergraduate computer science majors in their third or fourth year of college.
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Introduction to Programming Using Java
David Eck · David J. Eck · 2015
Welcome to the Eighth Edition of Introduction to Programming Using Java, a free, on-line textbook on introductory programming, which uses Java as the language of instruction. This book is directed mainly towards beginning programmers, although it might also be useful for experienced programmers who want to learn something about Java. It is not meant to provide complete coverage of the Java language. The eighth edition requires Java 8 or later, and it uses JavaFX for GUI programming. Version 8.1 is a small update of Version 8.0. This version briefly covers some of the new features in Java 11 and makes it clearer how to use this book with Java 11 and later.