Bookshelf

Random pieces I enjoyed reading.

Software design

These are on the top of my list. Cooper’s book is great for learning about the process of developing software in general. Philip’s book is about web sites, and since all interesting program in the next few years will be web sites, it’s equally relevant. Scott McCloud’s book is about the combined visual and written language used in cartoons. As it turns out, these are the same elements available to most software. Finally, there’s Tufte, with his excellent, intelligent approach to information design in general, also highly relevant to software.

• The inmates are running the asylum by Alan Cooper explains the right process for developing software that’s useful to users. Too bad it isn’t free (even though you’d expect Cooper to make enough money from his job to refrain from the few bucks earned from a book).

• Philip and Alex’s Guide to Web Publishing by Philip Greenspun
  

  What Philip thinks web publishing is all about, and also technical help on how to do it in real life. There’s a whole lot of interesting reads scattered around his whole website, so dig around.

• <a href=”http://www.scottmccloud.com/objects/uc/uc.html”>Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. Boy, I wish someone would write an introductory computer science textbook with Scott.

• Visual Explanations by <a href=”http://www.cs.yale.edu/people/faculty/tufte.html”>Edward Tufte. Also read his other books, they’re all worth it.

Free Software

• Why Software Should Not Have Owners by Richard Stallman
  Stallman, from MIT, is the guy that started the whole thing. Most of the articles in the philosophy section are worth reading.

• The Right to Read by Richard Stallman
  

  A piece of prose depicting where we may be headed.

Other Interesting Articles

• The Cathedral and the Bazaar by Eric S. Raymond
  This is the “original” and often cited article.

• The Magic Cauldron By Eric S. Raymond
  

  Raymond has also published a book titled “The Cathedral and the Bazaar”. This is a chapter from that book on revenue models for free (or, rather, open source) software.

• <a href=”http://www.cnn.com/interactive/computing/9911/microsoft.finding/microsoft.html”>Findings of Fact by Thomas Penfield Jackson
  From the US vs Microsoft antitrust case. Makes for an interesting read, although it doesn’t have anything to do with free software per se.

• Is Microsoft the Great Satan? by Free Software Foundation
  This is, I guess, the “official” Free Software Foundation view on Microsoft.

• The Microsoft Antitrust Trial and Free Software by Richard Stallman
  

  What Stallman thinks should be done about Microsoft and their monopoly power.

• In the Beginning was the Command Line by Neal Stephenson
  A humorous and insightful essay about the operating system business. Makes for an interesting read for technical and non-technical people alike.

• The Death of File Systems by Jakob Nielsen
  A short article on what we intuitively know is wrong with the file system of today’s operating systems.

• Route to Creativity: Following Bliss or Dots? By Natalie Angier
  Are computers creative or is advertising just a dull, non-creative business?