Great Principles of Computing (Paperback)

Computing is usually viewed as a technology field that advances at the breakneck speed of Moore's Law. If we turn away even for a moment, we might miss a game-changing technological breakthrough or an earthshaking theoretical development. This book takes a different perspective, presenting computing as a science governed by fundamental principles that span all technologies. Computer science is a science of information processes. We need a new language to describe the science, and in this book Peter Denning and Craig Martell offer the great principles framework as just such a language. This is a book about the whole of computing -- its algorithms, architectures, and designs.

Denning and Martell divide the great principles of computing into six categories: communication, computation, coordination, recollection, evaluation, and design. They begin with an introduction to computing, its history, its many interactions with other fields, its domains of practice, and the structure of the great principles framework. They go on to examine the great principles in different areas: information, machines, programming, computation, memory, parallelism, queueing, and design. Finally, they apply the great principles to networking, the Internet in particular. Great Principles of Computing will be essential reading for professionals in science and engineering fields with a "computational" branch, for practitioners in computing who want overviews of less familiar areas of computer science, and for non-computer science majors who want an accessible entry way to the field.

計算通常被視為一個以摩爾定律的破頭速度前進的技術領域。如果我們稍微分心，可能就會錯過一個改變遊戲規則的技術突破或者一個震撼人心的理論發展。這本書提供了一個不同的觀點，將計算視為一門由貫穿所有技術的基本原則所統治的科學。計算機科學是一門關於信息處理的科學。我們需要一種新的語言來描述這門科學，而Peter Denning和Craig Martell在這本書中提供了偉大原則框架作為這樣一種語言。這是一本關於整個計算領域的書籍——它的算法、架構和設計。

Denning和Martell將計算的偉大原則分為六個類別：通信、計算、協調、回憶、評估和設計。他們首先介紹了計算，它的歷史，它與其他領域的許多交互作用，它的實踐領域以及偉大原則框架的結構。然後，他們繼續在不同領域中研究偉大原則：信息、機器、編程、計算、記憶、並行、排隊和設計。最後，他們將偉大原則應用於網絡，特別是互聯網。《計算的偉大原則》將成為科學和工程領域中具有“計算”分支的專業人士的必讀之書，對於希望了解計算機科學中較不熟悉領域的從業人員以及非計算機科學專業的學生來說，它也是一個易於理解的入門指南。