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Reviewer: Neil Robert Karl

This book is designed to be an introductory text for a college course in computer programming. It covers a lot of territory. Prerequisites for this text are a familiarity with mathematical logic and inductive proofs. The author uses the proof technique of substituting one equal program formula for another as long as the substitution produces the same effect. Environmental diagrams are plentiful. The author presents programming maxims such as “the best program is the most beautiful program” and “the most beautiful program is the best.” Another maxim is to program a solution, generalize this solution, and then make it more abstract. The solution is then translated into a form acceptable to your programming system. Tools are the invention of an abstract language starting with a procedure structure def . . . enddef, which translates to a Pascal procedure with or without parameters and recursion. The author also uses select . . . endselect, if . . . fi, case . . . endcase, times do . . . od, iterate . . . enditerate, etc. After the development of each abstract structure, he gives the rules for translation to Pascal. As examples, he creates abstract instructions such as printchar, nextline, printnumber, readchar, and readnumber. The first part of the book develops printing symbols and raster printing of block characters or symbols. At the end of most chapters are appendices and exercises. After completing the presentation of abstract constructs, examples involve a numerical calculator, printing calendars, searching for sequences, and processing tree structures, graphs, and mazes. The author closes with a discussion on inventing rules for transcription from his abstract constructs to any high-level machine language. This is a jolly good intellectual exercise]