Reading assignments

The current reading assignment

Assigned 26 November 2001: Why the Mars Probe went off course, by James Oberg, from IEEE Spectrum, Volume 36 Number 12, December 1999.

Previous assignments

• Assigned 24 September 2001:
  1. SICP dedication, Alan Perlis on fun in computing
  2. SICP Foreward by Alan Perlis, up to "Lisp is a survivor".
  3. SICP Preface to the first edition
  4. SICP First page of Chapter 1, up to "Programming in Lisp".
  5. Block diagram of UltraSPARC-I processor
  6. Photograph of UltraSPARC-I processor
• Assigned 1 October 2001:
  1. From a 1994 NSF workshop on signal processing for the National Information Infrastructure (NII):
     • Signal Decomposition
     • Signal Compression
     • Perceptual Coding
  2. Short introduction to MPEG Layer-3
  3. Fraunhofer IIS-A page on MPEG Layer-3
• Assigned 22 October 2001:
  1. Jargon: considered harmful
  2. Edsger W. Dijkstra's Go To Statement Considered Harmful
  3. Bill Nicholls, Evolution of Programming Methodology, Part I. In four pages:
     1. page 1
     2. page 2
     3. page 3
     4. page 4
• Assigned 29 October 2001:
  1. Saddleback Search, by David Gries
  2. (Optional: considered silly): An interview with Dick Loop-Invariant
• Assigned 19 November 2001: The Lessons of ValuJet 592, by William Langewiesche. This article, from The Atlantic Monthly, March 1998, Volume 281, Number 3, pages 81-98, is now online in three parts:
  1. Part 1
  2. Part 2
  3. Part 3
• Assigned 26 November 2001: Why the Mars Probe went off course, by James Oberg, from IEEE Spectrum, Volume 36 Number 12, December 1999.

Last updated 26 November 2001.