Books

Books : reviews

Dick Pountain, David May.
A Tutorial Introduction to occam Programming.
Blackwell. 1987

There is an increasing trend towards parallel computing both in business and in the scientific and engineering fields. Occam is rapidly being seen as an effective solution to the problem of programming concurrent systems of all kinds, and as a powerful tool for describing concurrent algorithms.

The aim of the book is to introduce the reader to concurrent programming using the occam language. It provides examples of occam programming and discusses the novel concepts which occam employs. The second half of the book provides a formal description of the occam language.

The book does not assume extensive knowledge of any other high level computer language, or of machine code programming, though it does assume a familiarity with the general concepts of computing. It will be essential reading for anyone, whether undergraduate or computer user, concerned with concurrent or parallel processing.