Softpanorama (slightly skeptical) Open Source Software Educational Society

May the source be with you, but remember the KISS principle ;-) Softpanorama Search

Softpanorama Classic Series

Steve McConnell describes the book as "a celebration of design in the small''. I would call it "Introduction to Donald Knuth." Of cause this book cannot be compared to the Art of Computer Programming, but still it is a classic in light-weight category, as the best popular introduction to important ideas. Actually there are two books Programming Pearls and More programming Pearls. The first one has two editions (1985 and 1999), the second only one (1988).  The Lucent Website Programming Pearls  contains the complete text of Appendix 2, which is a funny quiz that tests your estimation ability. Please do not take it too seriously, but whether or not you think of yourself as a programmer, you can enjoy getting some obscure estimates of this quiz. Just try to get some secondary data that you already know and then you can logically estimate actual data from them. For example for Napoleon if you remember that his Russian campaign started in 1812 you can guess that Napoleon was at least 40 years old and get estimate 1872 :-).  There is no time limit and you can skip some US-specific questions if you have no data for them and stop as soon as you became tied. But generally it's a pretty interesting test of the logical abilities.

The first edition: Programming Pearls ~ Usually ships in 24 hours

Jon Louis Bentley / Paperback / Published 1985


Amazon price: $20.95

Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1986. Also published by ACM in  December 1985
ISBN: 0201103311

The second edition: Programming Pearls, Second Edition (ACM Press)

Jon Bentley / Paperback / Published 1999


Amazon Price: $17.47
Paperback - 256 pages 2nd edition (October 1, 1999)
Addison-Wesley Pub Co; ISBN: 0201657880 ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.64 x 9.22 x 6.25
Amazon.com Sales Rank: 1,460

 

More Programming Pearls : Confessions of a Coder

Jon Louis Bentley
Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Pub. Co., 1988.

Reviews:

•  

  ERCB DDJ Programmer's Bookshelf June 1991

  -- Confessions of an Efficient Coder. Review by Ray Duncan

  1. See also Slashdot Book Reviews Programming Pearls (Second Edition) Please note that this book has a nice website Programming Pearls

Programming Pearls annotation from the ACM homepage. Here is some bibliography:

•  

  Jon Louis Bentley,

  Kenneth L. Clarkson, David B. Levine: Fast Linear Expected-Time Algorithms for Computing Maxima and Convex Hulls. Algorithmica 9(2): 168-183 (1993)

  1. Jon Louis Bentley, M. Douglas McIlroy: Engineering a Sort Function. SP&E 23(11): 1249-1265 (1993)
  2. Jon Louis Bentley, Brian W. Kernighan: Tools for Printing Indexes. Electronic Publishing 1(1): 3-17 (1988)
  3. Jon Louis Bentley: The Furbelow Memorandum. CACM 30(12): 998-999, 1010 (1987)
  4. Jon Louis Bentley: Self-Describing Data. CACM 30(6): 479-483 (1987)
  5. Jon Louis Bentley: A Sample of Brilliance. CACM 30(9): 754-757 (1987)
  6. Jon Louis Bentley, John A. Dallen: Exercises in Software Design. TSE 13(11): 1164-1169 (1987)
  7. Jon Louis Bentley: Birth of a Cruncher. CACM 29(12): 1155-1161 (1986)
  8. Jon Louis Bentley: Cutting the Gordian Knot. CACM 29(2): 92-96 (1986)
  9. Jon Louis Bentley, Daniel Dominic Sleator, Robert Endre Tarjan, Victor K. Wei: A Locally Adaptive Data Compression Scheme. CACM 29(4): 320-330 (1986)
  10. Jon Louis Bentley: Literate Programming. CACM 29(5): 364-369 (1986)
  11. Jon Louis Bentley: A Literate Program. CACM 29(6): 471-483 (1986)
  12. Jon Louis Bentley: Little Languages. CACM 29(8): 711-721 (1986)
  13. Jon Louis Bentley, Brian W. Kernighan: GRAP - A Language for Typesetting Graphs. CACM 29(8): 782-792 (1986)
  14. Jon Louis Bentley: Document Design. CACM 29(9): 832-839 (1986)
  15. Jon Louis Bentley: Selection. CACM 28(11): 1121-1127 (1985)
  16. Jon Louis Bentley: Tricks of the Trade. CACM 28(2): 138-141 (1985)
  17. Jon Louis Bentley: Thanks, Heaps. CACM 28(3): 245-250 (1985)
  18. Jon Louis Bentley: A Spelling Checker. CACM 28(5): 456-462 (1985)
  19. Jon Louis Bentley: Associative Arrays. CACM 28(6): 570-576 (1985)
  20. Jon Louis Bentley: Confessions of a Coder. CACM 28(7): 671-679 (1985)
  21. Jon Louis Bentley: Bumper-Sticker Computer Science. CACM 28(9): 896-901 (1985)
  22. Harold N. Gabow, Jon Louis Bentley, Robert Endre Tarjan: Scaling and Related Techniques for Geometry Problems. STOC 1984: 135-143
  23. Jon Louis Bentley, David S. Johnson, Frank Thomson Leighton, Catherine C. McGeoch, Lyle A. McGeoch: Some Unexpected Expected Behavior Results for Bin Packing. STOC 1984: 279-288
  24. Jon Louis Bentley: Perspective on Performance. CACM 27(11): 1087-1092 (1984)
  25. Jon Louis Bentley: A Little Program, A Lot of Fun. CACM 27(12): 1179-1182 (1984)
  26. Jon Louis Bentley: Code Tuning. CACM 27(2): 91-96 (1984)
  27. Jon Louis Bentley: The Back of the Envelope. CACM 27(3): 180-184 (1984)
  28. Jon Louis Bentley: How to Sort. CACM 27(4): 287-291 (1984)
  29. Jon Louis Bentley: Squeezing Space. CACM 27(5): 416-421 (1984)
  30. Jon Louis Bentley: Graphic Output. CACM 27(6): 529-536 (1984)
  31. Jon Louis Bentley: Updates. CACM 27(7): 630-636 (1984)
  32. Jon Louis Bentley: Algorithm Design Techniques. CACM 27(9): 865-871 (1984)
  33. Jon Louis Bentley, Catherine C. McGeoch: Amortized Analyses of Self-Organizing Sequential Search Heuristics. CACM 28(4): 404-411 (1984)
  34. Jon Louis Bentley: Abstract Data Types. CACM 30(4): 284-290 (1984)
  35. Jon Louis Bentley: Data Structures Programs. CACM 26(10): 726-730 (1983)
  36. Jon Louis Bentley: Writing Correct Programs. CACM 26(12): 1040-1045 (1983)
  37. Jon Louis Bentley: Cracking the Oyster. CACM 26(8): 549-552 (1983)
  38. Jon Louis Bentley: Aha! Algorithms. CACM 26(9): 623-628 (1983)
  39. Jon Louis Bentley, Mark G. Faust, Franco P. Preparata: Approximation Algorithms for Convex Hulls. CACM 25(1): 64-68 (1982)
  40. Jon Louis Bentley, Donna J. Brown: A General Class of Resource Tradeoffs. JCSS 25(2): 214-238 (1982)
  41. Jon Louis Bentley, Donna J. Brown: A General Class of Resource Tradeoffs (Extended Abstract). FOCS 1980: 217-228
  42. Christos H. Papadimitriou, Jon Louis Bentley: A Worst-Case Analysis of Nearest Neighbor Searching by Projection. ICALP 1980: 470-482
  43. Jon Louis Bentley, Hermann A. Maurer: Efficient Worst-Case Data Structures for Range Searching. Acta Informatica 13: 155-168 (1980)
  44. Jon Louis Bentley: Multidimensional Divide-and-Conquer. CACM 23(4): 214-229 (1980)
  45. Jon Louis Bentley: A Parallel Algorithm for Constructing Minimum Spanning Trees. J. Algorithms 1(1): 51-59 (1980)
  46. Jon Louis Bentley, James B. Saxe: Decomposable Searching Problems I: Static-to-Dynamic Transformation. J. Algorithms 1(4): 301-358 (1980)
  47. Jon Louis Bentley, Mary Shaw: An Alphard Specification of a Correct and Efficient Transformation on Data Structures. TSE 6(6): 572-584 (1980)
  48. James B. Saxe, Jon Louis Bentley: Transforming Static Data Structures to Dynamic Structures (Abridged Version). FOCS 1979: 148-168
  49. Jon Louis Bentley, Jerome H. Friedman: Data Structures for Range Searching. Computing Surveys 11(4): 397-409 (1979)
  50. Jon Louis Bentley, Hermann A. Maurer: A Note on Euclidean Near Neighbor Searching in the Plane. Information Processing Letters 8(3): 133-136 (1979)
  51. Jon Louis Bentley: Decomposable Searching Problems. Information Processing Letters 8(5): 244-251 (1979)
  52. Jon Louis Bentley: Multidimensional Binary Search Trees in Database Applications. TSE 5(4): 333-340 (1979)
  53. Jon Louis Bentley, Michael Ian Shamos: Divide and Conquer for Linear Expected Time. Information Processing Letters 7(2): 87-91 (1978)
  54. Jon Louis Bentley, H. T. Kung, Mario Schkolnick, C. D. Thompson: On the Average Number of Maxima in a Set of Vectors and Applications. JACM 25(4): 536-543 (1978)
  55. Jon Louis Bentley, Donald F. Stanat, E. Hollings Williams Jr.: The Complexity of Finding Fixed-Radius Near Neighbors. IPL 6(6): 209-212 (1977)
  56. Jon Louis Bentley, Michael Ian Shamos: Divide-and-Conquer in Multidimensional Space. STOC 1976: 220-230
  57. Jon Louis Bentley, Walter A. Burkhard: Heuristics for Partial-Match Retrieval Data Base Design. Information Processing Letters 4(5): 132-135 (1976)
  58. Jon Louis Bentley, Andrew Chi-Chih Yao: An Almost Optimal Algorithm for Unbounded Searching. Information Processing Letters 5(3): 82-87 (1976)
  59. Jon Louis Bentley: Multidimensional Binary Search Trees Used for Associative Searching. CACM 18(9): 509-517 (1975)
  60. Jon Louis Bentley, Donald F. Stanat: Analysis of Range Searches in Quad Trees. Information Processing Letters 3(6): 170-173 (1975)
  61. Raphael A. Finkel, Jon Louis Bentley: Quad Trees: A Data Structure for Retrieval on Composite Keys. Acta Informatica 4: 1-9 (1974)