Great Ideas in Computer Science With Java

by Alan W. Biermann and Dietolf Ramm

• ISBN13: 9780262024976
• ISBN10: 0262024977
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-11-01
• Publisher: Mit Pr
• More Book Details
• Purchase Benefits

Summary

This book presents the "great ideas" of computer science, condensing a large amount of complex material into a manageable, accessible form; it does so using the Java programming language. The book is based on the problem-oriented approach that has been so successful in traditional quantitative sciences. For example, the reader learns about database systems by coding one in Java, about system architecture by reading and writing programs in assembly language, about compilation by hand-compiling Java statements into assembly language, and about noncomputability by studying a proof of noncomputability and learning to classify problems as either computable or noncomputable. The book covers an unusually broad range of material at a surprisingly deep level. It also includes chapters on networking and security. Even the reader who pursues computer science no further will acquire an understanding of the conceptual structure of computing and information technology that every well-informed citizen should have.

Table of Contents

Preface
Studying Academic Computer Science: An Introduction
The World Wide Web	p. 1
World History and Where We Are	p. 1
Let's Create Some Web Pages	p. 2
More HTML	p. 10
We Love HTML, But ...	p. 13
Watch Out: Here Comes Java	p. 17
Let's Put Some Action into Those Web Pages	p. 17
The Big Deal: Computer Programming	p. 19
Object-Oriented Programming	p. 19
The Java Programming Language	p. 22
Decision Trees	p. 22
Getting Started in Programming	p. 27
Program Form and Statement Details	p. 29
Program Execution	p. 31
Interactive Programs and Buttons	p. 35
Reading and Storing Data	p. 40
Programming Decision Trees	p. 51
The Arrow Notation and Its Uses	p. 64
A Set of Rules for Java	p. 78
Numerical Computation and a Study of Functions	p. 83
Let's Calculate Some Numbers	p. 83
Simple Calculations	p. 84
Functions	p. 95
Looping and a Study of Functions	p. 97
Searching for the Best Value	p. 104
Storing Information in Arrays	p. 109
Finding Sums, Minima, and Maxima	p. 117
Putting Thins in a Row, and a Special Characteristic of Functions	p. 123
Putting the Functions in a Row	p. 125
Top-Down Programming, Subroutines, and a Database Applications	p. 131
Let's Solve a Mystery	p. 131
Top-Down Programming and the Database Program	p. 132
Subroutines	p. 135
Subroutines with Internal Variables	p. 137
Subroutines with Array Parameters	p. 150
Subroutine Communication Examples	p. 156
Storing and Printing Facts for the Database	p. 160
Representing Questions and Finding Their Answers	p. 166
Assembling the Database Program and Adding Components	p. 171
Recursion	p. 180
Graphic, Classes, and Objects	p. 191
Calling All Artists	p. 191
Graphics Primitives	p. 191
Let's Draw Some Pictures	p. 195
Let's Create a Class Called House	p. 199
Adding Features to the House Class	p. 203
Creating a Village	p. 207
Subclasses and the Java Class Hierarchy	p. 209
Simulation	p. 215
Predicting the Future	p. 215
How Do You Win an Auto Race? A Simulation	p. 216
Avoiding the Plague: A Simulation	p. 221
Have You Ever Observed Evolution in Action? A Simulation	p. 224
What Will It Look Like? A Simulation	p. 228
Software Engineering	p. 235
The Real World	p. 235
Lessons Learned from Large-Scale Programming Projects	p. 236
Software Engineering Methodologies	p. 238
The Program Life Cycle	p. 242
Machine Architecture	p. 247
When You Buy a Computer	p. 247
A Sample Architecture: The P88 Machine	p. 248
Programming the P88 Machine	p. 252
Language Translation	p. 261
Enabling the Computer to Understand Java	p. 261
Syntactic Production Rules	p. 262
Attaching Semantics to the Rules	p. 268
The Semantics of Java	p. 271
The Translation of Looping Programs	p. 280
Programming Languages	p. 289
Virtual Environments for Computing	p. 297
Use Your Imagination	p. 297
Using an Operating System	p. 300
Hardware Pragmatics	p. 302
The Operating System	p. 304
Files	p. 309
Contention for Memory and Paging	p. 313
Security, Privacy, and Wishful Thinking	p. 319
What's Really Going on Here?	p. 319
Good Passwords and Cracking	p. 321
Encryption	p. 323
Modern Encryption	p. 329
Attacks	p. 335
Computer Communications	p. 345
Exploration	p. 345
Layers and Local Area Networks (LANs)	p. 346
Wide Are Networks	p. 350
The Internet Protocol (IP) Layer and Above	p. 352
More on Addressing	p. 354
Networked Servers	p. 356
More Network-Based Applications	p. 357
The Changing Internet	p. 359
Program Execution Time	p. 363
On the Limitation of Computer Science	p. 363
Program Execution Time	p. 364
Tractable Computations	p. 365
Intractable Computations	p. 372
Some Practical Problems with Very Expensive Solutions	p. 377
Diagnosing Tractable and Intractable Problems	p. 382
Approximate Solutions to Intractable Problems	p. 384
Parallel Computation	p. 389
Using Many Processors Together	p. 389
Parallel Computation	p. 390
Communicating Processes	p. 395
Parallel Computation on a Standard Machine	p. 400
Variations on Architecture	p. 403
Connectionist Architecture	p. 405
Learning the Connectionist Weights	p. 412
Noncomputability	p. 423
Speed Is Not Enough	p. 423
On the Existence of Noncomputable Functions	p. 423
Programs That Read Programs	p. 428
Solving the Halting Problem	p. 431
Examples of Noncomputable Problems	p. 436
Proving Noncomputability	p. 438
Artificial Intelligence	p. 445
The Dream	p. 445
Representing Knowledge	p. 448
Understanding	p. 450
Learning	p. 457
Frames	p. 462
An Application: Natural Language Processing	p. 464
Reasoning	p. 471
Game Playing	p. 481
Game Playing: Historical Remarks	p. 486
Expert Systems	p. 489
Perspective	p. 496
The IntField and DoubleField Classes	p. 503
Readings	p. 511
Index	p. 515
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.