Software Engineering as a Craft An Article by Thomas Wilson thomaswilson.xyz The decreasingly tangible product of code, i.e. that all we have are files on a hard-drive, may make it easy to forget that writing software produces a thing. If you produce a wonky chair or an overly long fork, it’s easy to see the quality of work was not great. By calling for a perception of software as a craft, we fight against that ability to forget or not notice the final quality of the product. You could watch two software engineers with different levels of experience, or in different domains, and it wouldn’t necessarily be so easy to guess which is which, at least from a distance. So maybe there is something to be said for the value of software as a craft, for sometimes focusing on the practice of making better, or at least different, software just for the sake of it. craftsoftware
The Eyes Have It A Research Paper by Ben Shneiderman www.cs.umd.edu The Visual Information Seeking Mantra visualizationinformationdata
The Visual Information Seeking Mantra There are many visual design guidelines but the basic principle might be summarized as the Visual Information Seeking Mantra: Overview first, zoom and filter, then details-on-demand Overview first, zoom and filter, then details-on-demand Overview first, zoom and filter, then details-on-demand Overview first, zoom and filter, then details-on-demand Overview first, zoom and filter, then details-on-demand Overview first, zoom and filter, then details-on-demand Overview first, zoom and filter, then details-on-demand Overview first, zoom and filter, then details-on-demand Overview first, zoom and filter, then details-on-demand Overview first, zoom and filter, then details-on-demand Each line represents one project in which I found myself rediscovering this principle and therefore wrote it down it as a reminder. It proved to be only a starting point in trying to characterize the multiple information visualization innovations occurring at university, government, and industry research labs. visualizationinformation