INFORMATICS 41 • DAVID G. KAY • UC IRVINE • FALL 2009

Supplementary References on Lecture Topics

These links and books explain or illustrate some of the topics we've covered in lecture, typically in more detail than we've seen in class. They're supplementary, not assigned, unless we say otherwise.

• Scheme in the real world (note that Scheme is a member of the Lisp family of programming languages and that the main style of programming we're doing in Scheme is functional programming)
  • www.paulgraham.com. Paul Graham wrote the foundations of a web store in Lisp (a close relative of Scheme); he sold it to Yahoo for millions, and it forms the foundation of the Yahoo Store. His site has essays about programming languages and many other topics, including how Lisp contributed to his success.
    
  • Functional Programming in the Real World lists many real-world projects built using functional programming.
  • Joel on Software has a brief, well-written, and highly understandable article on functional programming in JavaScript.
  • MapReduce is an approach to programming developed at Google to spread large tasks automatically over large clusters of computers. It uses the principles of the higher-order Scheme functions map and reduce (also known as foldr). Another article about MapReduce.
  • Two February 2006 articles in EWeek (a news publication for the computing industry with a focus on large-scale business) about using Lisp in corporate environments: "'Exotic' Programming Tools Go Mainstream" and "Lisp Deserves a Fresh Look".
  • The effectiveness of Scheme in commercial web application development is described briefly and more completely.
  • Jane St. Capital is one example of a Wall Street firm that hires researchers and software developers with a background in functional programming (and strong quantitative skills). BIM majors take note!
  • Video of a live technical demo by a game developer who uses PLT Scheme.
  • Audacity software for recording and editing sound lets you write your own plug-in effects in Nyquist, a language based on Lisp. [Thanks to Sean Tsusaki for this information.]
  
  
• Scheme programming
  
  • How to Design Programs textbook. New second edition of HtDP (Chapters 1–7 so far).
    
  • DrScheme programming environment (free for Windows, MacOS, Linux).
    
  • Scheme Finger Exercises. A selection of mechanical exercises to solidify understanding of Scheme basics.
    
  • Maureen Black's Scheme Exercises. Fifty pages of worksheets keyed to Scheme and HtDP topics.
  • The "design recipe" concept applied to health care: "Annals of Medicine: The Checklist," by Atul Gawande (The New Yorker, December 10, 2007). If you've ever felt that following all the steps of the design recipe is too tedious and time-consuming, read this article.
    
  • Pair Programming Illuminated, by Laurie Williams and Robert Kessler. This book describes the practices and advantages of pair programming.
  • How to Design Worlds: Imaginative Programming in DrScheme, by Felleisen, Findler, Fisler, Flatt, and Krishnamurthi. This is a very basic introduction to programming animations using the world.ss teachpack.
  • The PLT Scheme documentation page, which lists documents for the full PLT Scheme language.
  • Writing Animations Using the world.ss Teachpack, by Matthias Felleisen.
  • A personal attachment to Scheme (not recommended!).
    
    
• Broader topics in computing


• Fluency with Information Technology, second edition, by Lawrence Snyder. This text covers some of the non-programming content of the course. There is a longer version than the one we've suggested as an optional text; it covers some of the social impact of computing and some programming, mostly in JavaScript. Its web page is http://www.aw.com/snyder.
  
  
• Exploring the Digital Domain, second edition, by Ken Abernethy and Tom Allen. Like the Fluency text, this book covers the broader context of computer systems, with a particular focus on multimedia.


• The Tao of Computing, by Henry Walker. Similar in theme to the previous two books, this one is both briefer and deeper.
  
  
• The Informatics faculty has compiled a far-ranging list of books they have found particularly influential.


• Caring for Your Wrists, by TidBITS Publishing. A two-page poster with good advice on avoiding repetitive stress injuries.


• Typographic Design for Computerized Text, by David G. Kay. Two pages on the basic principles of typographic readability.
  


• Tables of decimal, binary, hexadecimal, and ASCII values: a simple ASCII table with 8-bit codes, decimal, octal, and hexadecimal; all 255 ASCII characters, categorized; a compact ASCII table. The Unicode standard handles most of the world's writing systems; check out Ethiopic (from Africa), Devangari (from India), Chinese (from Asia), Cherokee (from North America), Armenian (from Europe), or Linear B (from ancient Greece).
  
  

David G. Kay,kay@uci.edu

Sunday, November 8, 2009 12:48 PM