Elements of Programming

New techniques for building more secure, reliable, high-performance software, from the renowned creator of the C++ STL.

A truly foundational book on the discipline of generic programming: how to write better software by mastering the development of abstract components.
Based on Alexander Stepanov's breakthrough lectures to programmers at Adobe and throughout Silicon Valley.
For serious software developers, architects, and engineers, the perfect complement to Knuth's theory and Stoustrup's practice.

Elements of Programming is the next breakthrough book for serious practitioners seeking ways to write better software. In this book, Alexander Stepanov - the legendary architect and creator of the C++ Standard Template Libraries - focuses on the discipline that offers the greatest potential for improving contemporary software: the proper development of abstract components. Drawing on his enormously popular lectures to programmers at Adobe and throughout Silicon Valley, Stepanov illuminates crucial techniques of generic programming, specifically focusing on abstraction as the key to secure, reliable, and high-performance software. Together with co-author and ACM Fellow Paul McJones, Stepanov shows programmers how to use mathematics to compose reliable algorithms from components, and to design effective interfaces between algorithms and data structures. Topics covered in Elements of Programming include: transformations, associative operations, linear orderings, ordered algebraic structures, iterators, coordinates and coordinate structures, copying algorithms, rearrangement, sorting, and much more. This book requires an understanding of mathematics, but is consistently focused on identifying superior solutions to practical programming problems. Stepanov and McJones illuminate their concepts and techniques with C++ code, but the techniques are equally applicable to a wide range of contemporary object-oriented languages.