Crawl-Space Computing: Cooperating programs that don't hide your data while they are working on it - Paperback

by Lawrence J. Dickson Phd (Author)

Aimed at scientists, teachers, hackers, and computer professionals, this book teaches the lost art of Wide Computing, which exposes data flows on the outermost layer. Using the C language in Linux, Windows, or embedded systems, it shows how to escape the abstraction monoculture that has turned Software Engineering into the "sick man" of the engineering disciplines.

The author, with a PhD in Mathematics from Princeton University, has spent decades making this work from embedded code to large user programs. After a clear Introduction couched in the language of physical science, he details a multi-wave design process that applies to any project. His design process, built upon the historic occam computing language, is completely understandable and robust. To enable coding in practice without reinventing the communication wheel, he wrote and here teaches the use of his C library, Connel.

The book is ideal for home projects, education, and corporate and government projects of whatever size. It reduces complex projects from exponential or worse difficulty to linear. The "pieces" designed this way will last for decades, not needing continual maintenance.

The chapters are:

1. Introduction to Wide Computing
2. First Wave: Design the Major Pieces
3. Tools: Standard Products, Wide Pseudocode, and Connel
4. Second Wave: Pseudocode the Hardware and the Data Flow
5. Programming Using Connel
6. Wide Embedded Programming

The book is well supplied with figures, links, and code samples, and includes Preface, Acronyms and Abbreviations glossary, and Index.

Author Biography

Lawrence J. Dickson has a PhD in Mathematics from Princeton University. Educated in the Age of Science for the race to the moon, he has spent his working life in computing, and holds several patents. During the era of the Transputer he learned Wide Computing, and has never abandoned it since.