writing for a specialized audience

[gusl]

Right now I'm reading William Cohen's book "A Computer Scientist's guide to Cell Biology", and I find the delivery to be very efficient (though I have little to compare it with), probably because he takes an informational perspective, and isn't shy about using CS concepts and terminology.

You know the "X for dummies" collection? I'd love to see some "X for geeks" series. It could be specialized into "X for mathematicians", "X for Computer Scientists", "X for type theory geeks", etc.

According to Sussman, the legacy of Computer Science is its formal language:

<< Computer Science is not a science, and its ultimate significance has little to do with computers. The computer revolution is a revolution in the way we think and in the way we express what we think. >>

I suspect that, when most scientists speak this "language", we will see greater understanding across disciplines. This is already happening.

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Tangentially, I'd like to see a book on how to cope with "bad" programming languages, all the while being a hygienist. e.g. tricks for emulating a type system, etc.

Comments

[aisa0.livejournal.com]

This was extremely interesting to read, but I was disappointed at the lack of detail. I don't feel I walked away with anything I could apply. Did I miss that section, or are there other documents that explore this idea further? I'd love to see some examples of practice, a technique, or some concretization of what the article is discussion.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

hm, I think of this article as abstract and philosophical.
I can think of examples of computational thinking in Psychology (e.g. computational cognitive models, such as symbolic or connectionist models)
CMU seems to embody "computational thinking" more than any other school. Even the English department has professors using NLP to analyze Shakespeare. :-D

[chrisamaphone]

yeah, i guess more than "helpful" i should say interesting and perhaps inspiring. if i come across anything more concrete, i'll direct it your way.

[aisa0.livejournal.com]

Thank you, I would love that.