The edition of this classic text for the breadth-first computer science course has been thoroughly updated to discuss increasingly important trends such as networking, object-oriented programming, and genetic algorithms. Author and educator J.Glenn Brookshear continues to introduce students to the discipline of computer science by providing accurate and balanced coverage of CS as a whole and of a variety of CS topics, including programming languages and artificial intelligence. This edition features new sections on public key encryption, evolutionary programming and genetic algorithms, as well as thoroughly revised sections on data manipulation, operating systems and networking.