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0 pointsbmer9y ago0 comments

I have learned not to put much weight in Amazon reviews for technical literature. Borrow a copy of the books from a library (my city library actually had access to a digital version of Backhouse's latest book, and you could always Yarr! yourself a copy) and check them out, before shelling out the cash :)

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nickpsecurity9y ago

Well, the one reviewer said it was only a start toward a method for practical software with practical part maxing out at a sorting algorithm. Is that true or do you have examples of realistic stuff covered by book?

bmerOP9y ago

Backhouse's more playful book, focuses primarily on teaching one how to write and use proofs in the "calculational style" of Dijkstra/Hoare/Lamport/others.

Backhouse's less playful book covers the same topic, but has some more programming examples:

* cyclic code error correction * simple sorting algorithms * real number to integer conversion is used to introduce Galois connections

Again, this isn't a lot in terms of "practical examples". No production level software is built here. If you're looking for that sort of stuff, maybe you want to try out L. Lamport's book: http://www.amazon.com/Specifying-Systems-Language-Hardware-E...

I haven't read that book though.

nickpsecurity9y ago

Anyone that knows about all these resources should really scour them to put together a list of their application to real-world problems. Any researchers that like the stuff should apply them to real-world problems. The reason is that we don't know if such methods are a waste of time or useful until that happens. So, I'm interested in anything you have on that.

EDIT: Your recommendation was good as it clearly has practical advice. I can tell just looking at table of contents. And, as a gift, I found the whole book for free plus other things in link below. :)

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/lamport/tla/bo...

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nickpsecurity9y ago

bmerOP9y ago

Backhouse's more playful book, focuses primarily on teaching one how to write and use proofs in the "calculational style" of Dijkstra/Hoare/Lamport/others.

Backhouse's less playful book covers the same topic, but has some more programming examples:

* cyclic code error correction * simple sorting algorithms * real number to integer conversion is used to introduce Galois connections

I haven't read that book though.

nickpsecurity9y ago

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/lamport/tla/bo...

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