The Nature of Computing

This book, The Nature of Computing, is written for students of computing in Universities and Colleges. It contains discussions of applied computing in the areas of image processing, robotics, wind energy (turbines and wind farms), neural circuits, and multi-programming. This revised and extended edition includes new chapters on Logic and Language, Production Systems, Synthesis of Digital Circuits, Microprocessor Design, Instruction Set Architecture, Systolic Arrays, The WeeBee Engine, Digital Signal Processing, and Vibration Energy Harvesting. This book will be highly useful to teachers and lecturers of practical computing courses. The whole book is informed by research, both the author's and more broadly, that is up to date, original and much of it is as yet previously unpublished. All software described in the book is non-commercial and freely downloadable from the internet and listed in the preface.This book emerged from the author's own teaching of a third year undergraduate University course entitled 'The Nature of Computing' over a period of twenty-four weeks. Learning and teaching resources that accompany the book chapters are freely available from the author, details for which are in the book.The author is currently Principal Lecturer Computing at the University of Worcester (UK) where he has been teaching for some twenty years. Prior to that he taught Physics at the Katholiek Universiteit Leuven, Belgium. He is the author of over seventy academic journal and conference publications in computing, game design, and physics. His most recent work involved teaching elementary children to code using animated stories (Story Writing Coding).