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> And books are by nature serial, yet they can express enormously complex ideas -- think of a compilers textbook. I'd argue that, in many cases, well-organized
by saulrh 8y ago
> And books are by nature serial, yet they can express enormously complex ideas -- think of a compilers textbook.
I'd argue that, in many cases, well-organized books have split their material up into chunks with formal interfaces between them. A textbook's table of contents and introduction create a high-level structure, cross-references allow like material to be grouped with like material to make a coherent picture of each subsystem or topic, and chapters can be read out of order or even skipped entirely by some readers. Textbooks for mathematics or computer science are the most obvious examples, but I find the same level of organization and ability to jump around even in popular science books and philosophical discourses. Even the simplistic "five paragraph essay" that is taught in elementary school can be interpreted as an implementation of a formal interface.
- jmillikin 8y agoAll of that is true of a single source file too -- editors can generate tables of content and cross-references. The experience of using a well-organized paper encyclopedia and Wikipedia are fundamentally different. The point of "serial" is that if I want to read a book, I have to pick an origin point and then start scanning linearly. There's no search bar in a textbook.
- jamessb 8y agoI agree. Many textbooks also include a depencency graph that suggests different orders in which the chapters could be read and understood.