Books about Abstraction from Amazon.com

Now that ActionScript is reengineered from top to bottom as a true object-oriented programming (OOP) language, reusable design patterns are an ideal way to solve common problems in Flash and Flex applications. If you're an experienced Flash or Flex developer ready to tackle sophisticated programming techniques with ActionScript 3.0, this hands-on introduction to design patterns is the book you need.

ActionScript 3.0 Design Patterns takes you step by step through the process, first by explaining how design patterns provide a clear road map for structuring code that actually makes OOP languages easier to learn and use. You then learn about various types of design patterns and construct small abstract examples before trying your hand at building full-fledged working applications outlined in the book. Topics in ActionScript 3.0 Design Patterns include:

• Key features of ActionScript 3.0 and why it became an OOP language
• OOP characteristics, such as classes, abstraction, inheritance, and polymorphism
• The benefits of using design patterns
• Creational patterns, including Factory and Singleton patterns
• Structural patterns, including Decorator, Adapter, and Composite patterns
• Behavioral patterns, including Command, Observer, Strategy, and State patterns
• Multiple design patterns, including Model-View-Controller and Symmetric Proxy designs

During the course of the book, you'll work with examples of increasing complexity, such as an e-business application with service options that users can select, an interface for selecting a class of products and individual products in each class, an action game application, a video record and playback application, and many more. Whether you're coming to Flash and Flex from Java or C++, or have experience with ActionScript 2.0, ActionScript 3.0 Design Patterns will have you constructing truly elegant solutions for your Flash and Flex applications in no time..
Price: $32.97 [Notify me when price goes down.]

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Price: $14.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Color is fundamental to life and art yet so diverse that it has seldom been studied in a comprehensive way. This ground-breaking analysis of color in Western culture from the ancient Greeks to the late twentieth century is a John Gage triumph. With originality and erudition, he describes the first theories of color articulated by philosophers from Democritus to Aristotle and the subsequent attempts by the Romans and their Renaissance disciples to organize color systematically or endow it with symbolic power. The place of color in religion, Newton's analysis of the spectrum, Goethe's color theory, and the theories and practices that have attempted to unite color and music are among the intriguing topics this award-winning book illuminates.
With a large classified bibliography, discursive footnotes, and an exhaustive index, Color and Culture is an invaluable resource for artists, historians of art and culture, psychologists, linguists, and anyone fascinated by this most inescapable and evocative element of our perceptions..
Price: $36.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In Software Abstractions Daniel Jackson introduces a new approach to software design that draws on traditional formal methods but exploits automated tools to find flaws as early as possible. This approach—which Jackson calls "lightweight formal methods" or "agile modeling"—takes from formal specification the idea of a precise and expressive notation based on a tiny core of simple and robust concepts but replaces conventional analysis based on theorem proving with a fully automated analysis that gives designers immediate feedback. Jackson has developed Alloy, a language that captures the essence of software abstractions simply and succinctly, using a minimal toolkit of mathematical notions. The designer can use automated analysis not only to correct errors but also to make models that are more precise and elegant. This approach, Jackson says, can rescue designers from "the tarpit of implementation technologies" and return them to thinking deeply about underlying concepts.

Software Abstractions introduces the key elements of the approach: a logic, which provides the building blocks of the language; a language, which adds a small amount of syntax to the logic for structuring descriptions; and an analysis, a form of constraint solving that offers both simulation (generating sample states and executions) and checking (finding counterexamples to claimed properties). The book uses Alloy as a vehicle because of its simplicity and tool support, but the book's lessons are mostly language-independent, and could also be applied in the context of other modeling languages..
Price: $27.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

If a trend is at all to be recognized in today's diverse field of design, it is the new flirtation with geometrical forms and solid colors. The book that documents this development is accordingly called NeoGeo.

Basic forms such as circles, squares and triangles are increasingly being used in creative work. One sees crystalline structures, diamonds, rhombi, patterns and grid-like frames. Elements influenced by the psychedelic and OpArt of the 1960s and 70s are being combined with the acid colors of the late 80s.

NeoGeo makes clear that this current abstract work is not a nostalgic phenomenon; rather, it borrows from illustration, collage, typography and computer art to create a whole new visual language..
Price: $37.14 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Worringer's classic study argues that in historical periods of anxiety and uncertainty, man seeks to abstract objects from their unpredictable state and transform them into absolute, transcendental forms. With an Introduction by Hilton Kramer..
Price: $12.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

With an analytical and rigorous approach to problem solving and programming techniques, this book is oriented toward engineering. Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs emphasizes the central role played by different approaches to dealing with time in computational models. Its unique approach makes it appropriate for an introduction to computer science courses, as well as programming languages and program design..
Price: $94.13 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Problem Solving, Abstraction, and Design Using C++ presents and reinforces basic principles of software engineering design and object-oriented programming concepts while introducing the C++ programming language. The hallmark feature of this book is the Software Development Method that is introduced in the first chapter and carried throughout in the case studies presented..
Price: $96.04 [Notify me when price goes down.]