May 1, 2024
Updated June 21, 2025
19 minute read
An Introduction to Pipes: More Than Just Conduits
Pipes are fundamental components of modern civilization, forming the unseen networks that deliver essential resources, remove waste, and enable countless industrial processes. At a very high level, a pipe is a tubular section or hollow cylinder, typically but not necessarily of circular cross-section, used mainly to convey substances which can flow — liquids and gases (fluids), slurries, powders, and masses of small solids. They are the arteries and veins of our cities and industries, crucial for everything from providing clean drinking water and safely transporting natural gas to facilitating complex chemical manufacturing.
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Reading list
We've selected ten books
that we think will supplement your
learning. Use these to
develop background knowledge, enrich your coursework, and gain a
deeper understanding of the topics covered in
Pipes.
Widely recognized textbook in fluid mechanics, a fundamental area for understanding the behavior of fluids in pipes. It provides a comprehensive introduction to the principles governing fluid flow, which is essential for analyzing pipe systems in various engineering disciplines. This book is commonly used as a textbook in undergraduate and graduate engineering programs.
This recent book focuses on building data processing pipelines using Apache Beam, a unified programming model. It covers concepts relevant to modern data engineering, including batch and stream processing, which are essentially advanced forms of 'piping' data. This is highly relevant for understanding contemporary applications of the 'pipes' concept in big data.
Covers modern data engineering practices using technologies like Spark and Delta Lake, which are used to build sophisticated data pipelines and processing workflows. It delves into contemporary approaches to managing and processing large datasets, highly relevant to the modern concept of data 'pipes'.
Delves into advanced Linux system programming concepts, including interprocess communication mechanisms like pipes. It provides a deeper understanding of how pipes function at a programmatic level within the Linux operating system. This is suitable for those with a programming background looking to understand the mechanics of pipes in a computing context.
This classic textbook applies the principles of fluid mechanics to various engineering problems, with a strong focus on civil and environmental engineering applications, where pipes are fundamental. It provides a solid foundation in the behavior of fluids in conduits and valuable reference for practical applications.
Provides a collection of practical recipes for shell scripting, including numerous examples of using pipes and other command-line utilities for various tasks. It good resource for learning by example and gaining hands-on experience with pipes in scripting.
An introductory guide to the Angular framework, this book will introduce the concept of Angular pipes for data transformation in a practical web development context. It is suitable for beginners in web development looking to understand this specific application of 'pipes'.
A good introductory book for those new to Unix-like systems. It covers the basics of the command line, including the concept and usage of pipes in a simple and accessible manner. is helpful for providing prerequisite knowledge for understanding pipes in a computing context.
While not exclusively about 'pipes,' this book covers functional programming concepts, including streams and data processing, which relate to the idea of data flowing through a series of operations, similar to a pipeline. It provides a theoretical foundation for understanding functional approaches to data manipulation as seen in some modern programming paradigms related to 'pipes' or streams.
For more information about how these books relate to this course, visit:
OpenCourser.com/topic/f2xdz2/pipe