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- If you’re interested in designing software users will enjoy using that will not constantly
annoy them, I highly recommend that you read
these two books by Alan Cooper:
- If you're interested in designing software that creates useful and creatively-designed displays for its users,
be sure to read these books by Edward Tufte
- The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
- Envisioning Information
- Visual Explanations
- The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint
- An article about How Microsoft Lost the API War
By Joel Spolsky.
- An article about The Post-OOP Paradigm
by Brian Hayes.
- An article about software productivity, The Emperor with No Clothes,
by Henry Ledgard.
- The Game of Life is a fascinating cellular automaton
that demonstrates amazingly complex behavior generated by a very simple set of rules.
- The Mandelbrot Fractal is a shape
that demonstrates the incredible complexity generated by a simple mathematical formula.
- The Williams Kilburn Tube,
an early RAM device (from the late 1940’s) which typically stored about 2K bits
(despite appearances, this is not a primitive nuclear weapon, just a very early 2K memory chip).
A description of how it worked is here.
- Computers are not the only machines that need to be “booted.”
Steam locomotives do too!
- Radio was once the cutting edge of “high-tech.”
The American Museum of Radio in Bellingham, WA
is a fascinating display of an older technology. You can get valuable insights about where computers
might end up some day. For instance, I was leafing through a 1920’s magazine called “Popular Radio” and
found an article about “How to get the best performance from your radio.” Can you imagine that today?
But how many articles are there this year about tweaking your computer?
- The PCC Library is a great place to look for reference
materials and more.
- academic advising for students in Computer Technologies
- tutoring for students in Computer Technologies
