Rating: 
Summary: Very little redundancy, adequate coverage of material.
Review: The fundamentals of computing is not only critical to the understanding of how computers can be made to do things, it is also fun to do. In my experience, students quickly pick up the basic operations of finite automata and Turing machines. It is also very easy to make the step to applicability, in that parsing problems are easily expressible as finite automata. With all this simplicity, there is a lot of power. Turing machines are considered equivalent to digital computers, and that is the point that is most difficult to get across. Students understand that computers are complex machines, so they often find it difficult to comprehend that these simple abstractions consisting of a paper tape and transitions can model the behaviors of advanced computers.
A course in the theory of computing is now a universal requirement of the computer science major and to be effective the students must be convinced of the power of automata and Turing machines. This book succeeds in that area. Requiring only that the students understand the basics of sets, relations and functions, there is a brief, yet thorough coverage of finite automata, grammars and Turing machines. The last chapters cover undecidability and computational complexity. A set of problems is given at the end of each chapter and they are very good. To solve them, it is necessary to do a bit of thinking and apply one or more of the concepts introduced in the chapter. One characteristic that I found appealing is that there is no overkill of examples. Some of the books I have seen in this area give so many examples that the redundancy dominates the originality. There are few examples, so one is hard pressed to find anything that could be considered redundancy.
This book is shorter than most covering the theory of computing. However, there is enough to fill a semester course, so if you are in need of a textbook, this one may satisfy your needs.
Rating:
Summary: A good book for those new to the theory of computer language
Review: My theory of computer languages class was taught with this book and I must say it is a very good introduction. It gathers together a great deal of information having to do with the theory of computer languages. It gives good examples and works thorugh all the proofs thouroughly. For those interested in Finite State Automata, Pushdown Automata, Turing Machines, and the classification of languages then this is a must have.
Rating: 
Summary: Not for beginners
Review: the only thing that is good about this book is that its small. Thats it. Price is super high like its made of gold. Honestly, I found it very hard. I read chapter 1 for several times and I couldn't understand the last part of it. Anyone who reads this book has to have someone to help, eg. Teacher or a T.A. The authors just assume that we have previous knowledge about everything. Material is not well explained. It would be much better to google any topic to get a better explaination with examples.
Rating:
Summary: Good introduction
Review: This book is a good overview of many topics which unfortunately are rarely put together the way they should be. It explains the theory behind computer languages using well explained proofs and good examples. For those interested in Finite State Automata, Pushdown Automata, Turing Machines, the Halting Problem, or just want a good introduction the the underlying theories of computer science this is a must have
Rating:
Summary: Not good enough for beginners
Review: This book is required for a core computer science class, Discrete Structures and Functional Programming that I took. Usually when a book is a required read I check out a couple of other books on the subject at local bookstores or in the library and every time I've found something that I preferred over the required text. That was not the case with this book. I think it's because most professors look at a book from a completely different level then the students. No matter how hard they try they are no longer quite able to identify with us and therefore sometimes choose a book that is easier to understand for them then for us. That was not the case for my professor in this class. I feel that this book covers the subjects of finite automata, context-free languages, Turing machines, undecidability and complexity issues very well. The authors cover these subjects in a way that makes it easy for a student with a basic understanding in discrete mathematics to understand. Unlike the earlier reviewer, who stated that the students had to get other books from the library to understand these subjects, this didn't seem to be the case with the students that I associated with in the class. Make no mistake, they're are many complex ideas discussed within this text and it is no walk through the park trying to understand all of them but Efim Kinber and Carl Smith do a good job of speaking in a language that a student can understand as well as someone with a PhD.
Rating: 
Summary: Great intro to computer languages.
Review: This book is required for a core computer science class, Discrete Structures and Functional Programming that I took. Usually when a book is a required read I check out a couple of other books on the subject at local bookstores or in the library and every time I've found something that I preferred over the required text. That was not the case with this book. I think it's because most professors look at a book from a completely different level then the students. No matter how hard they try they are no longer quite able to identify with us and therefore sometimes choose a book that is easier to understand for them then for us. That was not the case for my professor in this class. I feel that this book covers the subjects of finite automata, context-free languages, Turing machines, undecidability and complexity issues very well. The authors cover these subjects in a way that makes it easy for a student with a basic understanding in discrete mathematics to understand. Unlike the earlier reviewer, who stated that the students had to get other books from the library to understand these subjects, this didn't seem to be the case with the students that I associated with in the class. Make no mistake, they're are many complex ideas discussed within this text and it is no walk through the park trying to understand all of them but Efim Kinber and Carl Smith do a good job of speaking in a language that a student can understand as well as someone with a PhD.
Rating:
Summary: Avoid
Review: This is "Theory of Computing" for dummies. There are very few examples, little mathematical rigor, and an unclear presentation
of the topics. It seemed like the text used the Lewis & Papadimitriou table of contents verbatim, but presented the material very weakly. I would not recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: Avoid
Review: This is "Theory of Computing" for dummies. There are very few examples, little mathematical rigor, and an unclear presentation
of the topics. It seemed like the text used the Lewis & Papadimitriou table of contents verbatim, but presented the material very weakly. I would not recommend this book.
Rating: 
Summary: The result is poor
Review: This is one of two books I must say sorry to. I hope readers may find my words helpful. I must say this is a poor book, although I feel the authors did put efforts to make it nice. There are a lot of classical and excellent books on this subject. But here's the reason my department chose it as our textbook: Because the other books are relatively hard and deep for the students. But here is the response from the studnets at the end of the semester, no matter it is an A student or C student: They hate this book, since they can not get much information after spending hours and hours on it. And they eventually found those "harder" books in lib, and loved them. The key reason is, those books explained everything clearly. (In almost the same number of pages.) The key problem as I see is, the authors just understood the materials in a certain way, but not thoroughly, and not able to explain it in a clear way. Only a person who has already know all the stuff can figure out what are the authors talking about in some part of the book. Now I believe, in order to write a good textbook for students, at least you should be a master in this area. If some of my words hurts, I am sorry. But I am talking about my feeling and most students' feeling.
Rating:
Summary: Not good enough for beginners
Review: This thin book is very easy to carry anywhere but the content of the book is not really satisfactory. I had to buy another similar book to understand some parts of this book. The problem exercise
parts are good. They have some good problems but when I get stuck on a problem, I had to open a different book to review before going on to a next problem. This book seems to assume that the most readers of this book already know what this book is talking about. This book may be suitable for those who already have enough knowledge on the theory and want to review and refresh the knowledge that they already had before.
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