Jon Louis Bentley

"I originally saw this book as a pre-print for a class taught by Jon on software engineering. I was deeply influenced by the four fundamentals rules: code simplification, problem simplification, relentless suspicion, and early binding which first appeared Elements Programming Style (which I have never read... much to my shame). I can see the influence of this book on every major piece of code I have written as well as how I approach systems which need to be sped up. My single biggest take show more away was to focus my attention on what will make the biggest difference. For example, if a program is spending all it's time in IO, don't improve the sorting algorithm, go after the IO subsystem." show less

If you want to learn about the latest web programming frameworks, design patterns, J2EE, .NET, CSS, RoR, etc. then please stay away from this book. Once you think you mastered it all, became a professional programmer with also a nice CS degree under your belt come back and start to read this book for pure pleasure and wisdom. It is with high probability that you'll have both and more than you could have imagined.

Bentley's classic work is still relevant but not in ways most programmers will show more imagine at the beginning. You'll probably never go and write your own search routines and re-implement classical data structures (you'll use the one that comes with the standard libraries of your language of choice) but you'll always meet some problems which will puzzle you with interesting constraints. This is what Programming Pearls is all about. Study the examples for fun and maybe laugh at them for their simplicity but then remember to applied the strong principles in that book to your daily technical problems (programming related or not). show less

I originally saw this book as a pre-print for a class taught by Jon on software engineering. I was deeply influenced by the four fundamentals rules: code simplification, problem simplification, relentless suspicion, and early binding which first appeared Elements Programming Style (which I have never read... much to my shame). I can see the influence of this book on every major piece of code I have written as well as how I approach systems which need to be sped up. My single biggest take show more away was to focus my attention on what will make the biggest difference. For example, if a program is spending all it's time in IO, don't improve the sorting algorithm, go after the IO subsystem. show less

Bentley tells stories of algorithm creation and other computer problem solving in the days of magnetic tape drives and mainframes.