My parents bought my first computer for me in 1981. I was 11. When my TRS-80 Color Computer was turned on, it booted up into a BASIC editor. What it did afterward was up to me. That computer came with a whopping 4K (not a typo, K) of RAM and no storage. We bought a cable to connect the computer to a cassette tape deck so that I could store programs on cassettes. It took several minutes to load an entire program into memory. I’m feeling nostalgic, but this article is not about that computer. It is about learning to…
Author: matthew
I used to write software. I confess, it has been a long time. There are parts about doing so that I loved (problem solving, being creative) and parts I didn’t enjoy (solving problems that I didn’t find interesting, over and over and over again). This book concentrates on the parts I enjoyed most. Think Like a Programmer came out earlier in 2012. It was published by No Starch Press, which consistently puts out books that impress me. It is one of the more consistent computer-related publishers and when I’m researching a specific topic, I generally look at any they offer,…
Occasionally, events that I experience, witness, or just hear about remind me to question myself, my values, and how I live them. I think that is how it should be. What follows is the result of today’s pondering. How do we determine whether a person is valuable or not? (Valuable in the sense of importance.) It seems like an easy question, and in one sense, perhaps it is. We all come with different values (value in the sense of amount or number or specific status) for specific attributes: some are smarter, others are athletic, still others are artistic. We can…
EDIT: Read this, then check out my added review of the 2nd Edition, ten years later. I love technical writing. Sincerely. When I say that to most people, they look at me oddly, squint a little, maybe cock their head sideways, and walk away. I think that is because most people don’t really understand what this job entails. To be sure, most people realize that technical writers are the ones who write those manuals that come with their favorite electronic toys and mechanical gadgets. We get credit for making sure mechanics have quality, accurate information before they lay a wrench…
I was thinking today about technical writing and how it fits within different companies. Some companies think of technical writing almost like a nation’s military forces. Both consist of trained professionals and are used as the last layer of protection–something that should perhaps only be focused on when a specific threat exists. “Oh, Customer X can’t figure out how to configure Product Y. Get a tech writer in here, quickly! Let’s get something written up.” Other companies think of technical writing as infrastructure. It is an important part of the overall whole, and if created using careful planning and quality…
It has again been a while since I have reviewed a manga book. This is one of several atypical educational books that use graphic art to help teach difficult concepts or illustrate the action and another wonderful entry in the “Manga Guide to…” series that I have been reviewing. I keep requesting review copies of each title in the series as they come out, and I have yet to be disappointed. This is an impressive series that consistently makes very difficult academic topics more interesting and a little easier for students. I would not consider these a replacement for a textbook,…
I’ve spent some of my free time over the last couple of months researching different databases for a chapter in one of my books. I have some limited experience using some NoSQL options, but must confess that I am not as familiar with many of the newer databases as I would like. As a part of my research, I read this book. Seven Databases in Seven Weeks: A Guide to Modern Databases and the NoSQL Movement by Eric Redmond and Jim R. Wilson came out earlier in 2012. It is published by The Pragmatic Programmers, as a part of their Pragmatic…
I moved house recently, and I got behind. I have several books in a pile waiting to be read and reviewed, and now that the dust has settled from the move, I’m ready to get back to it. I don’t have a time frame, but in the queue are books on databases, technical writing, and another entry in the Manga Guide series, this one on linear algebra. I’ve read enough of these to be certain they will be worth mentioning, but I also have several more that I haven’t even opened, so there may even be more than those three…
As I mentioned in an earlier review of writing-related books, I am a writer. I write for a living. I write technical documentation, books, occasional articles for magazines and websites, and more. This review covers a book that has been helpful to me primarily in technical writing. Wikis are wonderful. There, I said it right at the beginning. I’m biased. I’ve written documentation using everything from word processors like Microsoft Word and LibreOffice to XML variants like DocBook. I’ve hand-written entire suites of documentation using HTML and XHTML. I’ve also used various wikis, such as MediaWiki, MoinMoin, and the topic…
I had the privilege to lead the team that updated The Official Ubuntu Book for this seventh edition. The book continues to serve as a quality introduction for newcomers to Ubuntu, both the software and the community that surrounds it.