Texts on fundamentals of programming/computer science

[Phil Windley/20000000]

In article <354 at cbnewsc.ATT.COM> isaac at cbnewsc.ATT.COM (isaac.j.champagne) writes:

   So what are some good texts that cover the fundamentals of programming?
   I'm particularly interested in:
	   1.A text with more examples than confusing computer science
	     theory (preferably w/examples in C)
	   2.How about some good background in data structures?
	   3.How about programming paradigms? It seems like the "how to"
	     of programming may be more important than lots of
	     theories.


Try "Data Structures: an Advanced Approach using C" by Esakov and Weiss is
pretty good.  

That said, I think you're missing the point.  You seem to think that you
can be a good programmer without a funcdamental understanding of what's
going on.  This is a serious mistake.

If you take programming as the act of translating someone else's desing
into working C code, then you're probably going to be able to do that
without a lot of theoretical knowledge.  If you think that you can DESIGN
programs without the kind of important background knowledge that theory
provides then you're in for a rude awakening.  

For exmaple, how do you propose to choose the apporpriate data structure,
for example, without understanding the theory behind the choices?????


--
Phil Windley                          |  windley at iris.ucdavis.edu
Division of Computer Science          |  ucbvax!ucdavis!iris!windley
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University of California, Davis       |  Davis, CA 95616