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and discoveries. The purpose of this series is to share with both new and
experienced programmers a few decade’s worth of observations and
experience. I hope that these books will help shorten the time and reduce
the frustration that it takes to learn things “the hard way.”
This first volume, Understanding the Machine, is intended to fill in the low-
level details that are often skimmed over in a typical computer science or
engineering curriculum. The information in this volume is the foundation
upon which great software is built. You cannot write efficient code without
this information, and the solutions to many problems require a thorough
grounding in this subject. Though I’m attempting to keep each volume as
independent as possible of the others, Understanding the Machine might be
considered a prerequisite for all the following volumes.
The second volume, Thinking Low-Level, Writing High-Level, will immedi-
ately apply the knowledge gained in this first volume. Thinking Low-Level,
Writing High-Level will teach you how to analyze code written in a high-level
language to determine the quality of the machine code that a compiler
would generate for that code. Armed with this knowledge, you will be able
to write high-level language programs that are nearly as efficient as programs
handwritten in assembly language. High-level language programmers often
get the mistaken impression that optimizing compilers will always generate
the best machine code possible, regardless of the source code the pro-
grammer gives them. This simply isn’t true. The statements and data
structures you choose in your source files can have a big impact on the
efficiency of the machine code a compiler generates. By teaching you how
to analyze the machine code your compiler generates, Thinking Low-Level,
Writing High-Level will teach you how to write efficient code without resorting
to assembly language.
There are many other attributes of great code besides efficiency, and the
third volume in this series, Engineering Software, will cover some of those.
Engineering Software will discuss how to create source code that is easily read
and maintained by other individuals and how to improve your productivity
without burdening you with the “busy work” that many software engineering
books discuss. Engineering Software will teach you how to write code that other
programmers will be happy to work with, rather than code that causes them
to use some choice words about your capabilities behind your back.
Great code works. Therefore, I would be remiss not to include a volume
on testing, debugging, and quality assurance. Whether you view software
testing with fear or with disgust, or you feel it’s something that only junior
engineers should get stuck doing, an almost universal truth is that few pro-
grammers properly test their code. This generally isn’t because programmers
actually find testing boring or beneath them, but because they simply don’t
know how to test their programs, eradicate defects, and ensure the quality
of their code. As a result, few applications receive high-quality testing, which
has led the world at large to have a very low opinion of the software engi-
neering profession. To help overcome this problem, the fourth volume in
No Starch Press, Copyright © 2004 by Randall Hyde
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