Computing: the Art, the Magic, the Science






  My colleagues and I have just finished recording our new MOOC (online course), an official ETH offering on the EdX platform. The preview is available [1] and the course will run starting in September. As readers of this blog know, I  have enthusiastically, under the impulsion of Marco Piccioni at ETH, embraced MOOC technology … Read more




Smaller, better textbook






A new version of my Touch of Class [1] programming textbook is available. It is not quite a new edition but more than just a new printing. All the typos that had been reported as of a few months ago have been corrected. The format is also significantly smaller. This change is more than a … Read more




Publish no loop without its invariant






There may be no more blatant example of the disconnect between the software engineering community and the practice of programming than the lack of widespread recognition for the fundamental role of loop invariants.







Touch of Class book page available






The book page for Touch of Class (my introductory programming textbook), announced in the book, is finally available, courtesy Vladimir Tochilin: touch.ethz.ch It includes some book extracts (prefaces, table of contents, an entire sample chapter, for which I chose the Recursion chapter), a list of known errata and a wiki page to report new errata, … Read more




“Touch of Class” published






My textbook Touch of Class: An Introduction to Programming Well Using Objects and Contracts [1] is now available from Springer Verlag [2]. I have been told of many bookstores in Europe that have it by now; for example Amazon Germany [3] offers immediate delivery. Amazon US still lists the book as not yet published [4], but … Read more