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Chapter 4: Proofs

Chapter 4: Proofs

pp. 143-214

Authors

David Liben-Nowell, Carleton College, Minnesota
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Summary

A typical modern computational system is structured like a tower, with eachlayer’s proper behavior contingent on the correctness of the onebelow. The website that you use to send money to a friend relies on both astack of networking protocols (HTTP relying on TCP, which is relying on IP,etc.), as well as a stack of applications on your computer or your phone(your browser relying on your operating system, which is relying on thehardware itself). A key theme in computer science is this idea ofabstraction: that, so long as it’s workingproperly, you can rely on the next layer in one of these towers (or afunction in a large program, or . ..) without worryingabout how exactly it works. You just have to trustthat it works.

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