Matters Computational Ideas, Algorithms, Source Code

This is a book for the computationalist, whether a working programmer or anyone interested in methods
of computation. The focus is on material that does not usually appear in textbooks on algorithms.
Where necessary the underlying ideas are explained and the algorithms are given formally. It is assumed
that the reader is able to understand the given source code, it is considered part of the text. We use the
C++ programming language for low-level algorithms. However, only a minimal set of features beyond
plain C is used, most importantly classes and templates. For material where technicalities in the C++
code would obscure the underlying ideas we use either pseudocode or, with arithmetical algorithms, the
GP language. Appendix C gives an introduction to GP.