Dr Paul Curzon
"Fun" Reading for Students Starting a Computer Science Related Course
It is a good idea to read as much as possible before starting an undergraduate degree. However text books can be daunting (and a bit boring). The booklets and articles below have been written to be suitable for complete newcomers. I wrote most of them partly for my own amusement - I hope you will find them fun too. You will definitely learn a lot of computer science.
- Computing Without Computers: A Gentle Introduction to Computer Programming, Data Structures and Algorithms, Paul Curzon
- The whole thing in gzipped-word format...VERY BIG or read just individual parts below
- computer: A person who makes calculations; spec. a person employed for this in an observatory, etc. The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, OUP, 1993
- Preface [pdf format]
- Chapter 1 Out of Disorder [pdf format]
- Chapter 2 The Language Instinct [pdf format]
- Chapter 3 Plumbing [pdf format]
- Chapter 4 On the Move [pdf format]
- Chapter 5 If Only... [pdf format]
- Chapter 6 Play it Again Sam [pdf format]
- Chapter 7 Bigger and Better [pdf format]
- Chapter 8 In-Out, In-Out, Shake it All About [pdf format]
- Chapter 9 Repair Reuse, Recycle [pdf format]
- Chapter 10 The Pecking Order [pdf format]
- Chapter 11 The Other Queue Always Goes Faster [pdf format]
- Chapter 12 Seeing the Wood for the Trees [pdf format]
- Chapter 13 The Search is On [pdf format]
- Chapter 14 All Sorts of Everything [pdf format]
- Chapter 15 The Path of Righteousness [pdf format]
- Chapter 16 Greedy Algorithms [pdf format]
- Chapter 17 The Right Choice [pdf format]
- Chapter 18 The End is Nigh [pdf format]
- References [pdf format]
- Essays on the Human Side of Computer Science - Articles from usabilitynews.com and BCS interfaces