However, there are no books
that look systematically at the gap separating the theory of algorithms and
software engineering, even though many things can go wrong in taking
several algorithms and producing a software product derived from them.
This book is intended to fill this gap. It is not intended to teach algorithms
from scratch; indeed, I assume the reader has already been exposed to the
ordinary machinery of algorithm design, including the standard algorithms
for sorting and searching and techniques for analyzing the correctness and
complexity of algorithms (although the most important ones will be
reviewed). Nor is this book meant to teach software design; I assume that
the reader has already gained experience in designing reasonably complex
software systems. Ideally, the readers’ interest in this book’s topic was
prompted by the uncomfortable realization that the path from algorithm to
software was much more arduous than anticipated, and, indeed, results
obtained on the theory side of the development process, be they results
derived by readers or acquired from textbooks
