25 ms·

Ask HN: What's your favorite illustration in computer science?

• nrjames 4y ago
  These animations by Mike Bostock are great: https://bost.ocks.org/mike/algorithms/ https://bost.ocks.org/mike/algorithms/
  • fillskills 4y ago
    Ahmazing...
• aryehof 4y ago
  A couple of my favorites, including “A good architect leaves a footprint” https://imgur.com/a/xH2YIg3 https://imgur.com/a/xH2YIg3
• vivegi 4y ago
  For me, Penrose Tiling (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penrose_tiling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penrose_tiling) is an intersection of math, computation, architecture and design.
• iszomer 4y ago
  Watching sorting algorithms _play_ out. For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0zcl5ERS8E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0zcl5ERS8E
• blakesterz 4y ago
  https://paleofuture.com/blog/2009/3/23/computer-criminals-of-the-future-1981.html https://paleofuture.com/blog/2009/3/23/computer-criminals-of... "The 1981 book School, Work and Play (World of Tomorrow) features this beautiful two-page spread. Apparently, thanks to computers, there's no crime in the future outside of the computerized variety. The "computer criminal" pictured really doesn't appear to be running very fast. Maybe they're playing a game of freeze-tag. Or maybe that policeman's gun has special settings the author didn't tell us about. I like to believe the former, but that's just me." The book is full of really cool images like that one of "The Future" as seen from '81
  • superjan 4y ago
    > Computers will make the world of tomorrow a much safe place. They will do away with cash, so that you need no longer fear being attacked for your money. Hahaha
    • fatnoah 4y ago
      It's not wrong. You no longer have to be physically present to have your money stolen. It's safer for everyone.
    • safog 4y ago
      Yeah it's an interesting thought. Credit card scams, phishing, etc. have made new ways of stealing possible. It's 'safer' as in I think you can claim muggings or burglaries (or losses to these) have reduced because people just don't carry as much cash anymore.
      • zokier 4y ago
        There is even a song written about that :) > You don't have to rob me > It's not really worth it > I only have credit cards > And I can just cancel them > Know that you needed cash > But what the fuck's up with that? (DOMi & JD BECK - U DON'T HAVE TO ROB ME)
    • justinjlynn 4y ago
      The growing use of Debit and Credit Cards eliminating the need to carry a hundred or so with you at all times for spending/errand purposes without requiring the merchant to take the risk of taking personal cheques was a huge revolution made possible by mass computerisation in the finance industry. This includes the current discussions many governments are currently having about simply not issuing cash money any longer.
      • hooverd 4y ago
        Cash money still has its uses. I always carry some for tips and for when a business's payment card reader goes down and nobody knows how to process a card without it.
• jacquesm 4y ago
  Sort animations. https://www.hackerearth.com/practice/algorithms/sorting/quick-sort/visualize/ https://www.hackerearth.com/practice/algorithms/sorting/quic...
  • LVB 4y ago
    Watching SORTDEMO.BAS at the formative age of ~11 baited me into programming. I recall messing around trying to make even faster versions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leNaS9eJWqo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leNaS9eJWqo
  • Eduard 4y ago
    Youtube user Musicombo has plenty of videos showing different sorting algorithms in action and their runtime behavior under different (pathological) cases: e.g.: https://youtu.be/vr5dCRHAgb0 https://youtu.be/vr5dCRHAgb0
  • hansjorg 4y ago
    If you're more of a Lindy learner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3San3uKKHgg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3San3uKKHgg
    • jacquesm 4y ago
      That is really neat :)
    • TheMaskedCoder 4y ago
      I believe this is the original account. They produced several similar videos: https://www.youtube.com/@AlgoRythmics https://www.youtube.com/@AlgoRythmics
  • DaveSwift 4y ago
    [dead]
• hbcondo714 4y ago
  I don't remember the original source of this image but it's a comical take on the SDLC, showing how different roles / teams understand what the customer wanted versus needed when building a tree swing: https://www.amarkota.com/Content/images/portfolio/trees.jpg https://www.amarkota.com/Content/images/portfolio/trees.jpg
  • k__ 4y ago
    I worked in many companies that had it at the door to the Dev department.
  • trynewideas 4y ago
    Variations of it date back to at least the 1970s: https://www.businessballs.com/amusement-stress-relief/tree-swing-cartoon-pictures-early-versions/ https://www.businessballs.com/amusement-stress-relief/tree-s...
    • agumonkey 4y ago
      Impressive how not modern we are.
  • S04dKHzrKT 4y ago
    In a similar vein, I thought of the comic on how software companies are organized. https://bonkersworld.net/organizational-charts https://bonkersworld.net/organizational-charts
    • Quarrelsome 4y ago
      is there much truth to these patterns? I've never worked for FAANG so am unaware of their structures.
      • timidger 4y ago
        It was probably very true 10 years ago, for some of them it has become less true
• krwck 4y ago
  Not sure if it fits in scope, but I find this classic to be an ingenious intro to where to start from in terms of visualisation: https://bost.ocks.org/mike/algorithms/ https://bost.ocks.org/mike/algorithms/
  • shepherdjerred 4y ago
    This is fantastic!
  • robertlagrant 4y ago
    Mike Bostock is a legend in computing and visualisation.
• baby 4y ago
  The cipher mode of operations on wikipedia. I bet you anyone that does even a little amount of cryptography will bring up the CBC one from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_cipher_mode_of_operation?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_cipher_mode_of_operation...
  • hot_gril 4y ago
    I remember the Tux one showing the disadvantage of ECB.
    • baby 4y ago
      that's a great one as well!
• aliqot 4y ago
  The list of linux distributions on Wikipedia: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b5/Linux_Distribution_Timeline_21_10_2021.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b5/Linux_Di...
  • computerdork 4y ago
    This is awesome! Man, really amazing to see how linux has spawned an entire forest of different lineages. Wow!
  • themodelplumber 4y ago
    This makes me wonder: 1) Does Wikipedia / Wiki* not have a JS pan & zoom tool for graphics like these and 2) Has no one else made something like that just for this graphic? Asking because the graphical linux genealogy concept / this illustration have been around for a while, as have JS pan & zoom plugins, and it's totally worth having something like this in that format.[1] Edit: OK, there is Gadget-ZoomViewer (below), but maybe it doesn't work for SVGs? I don't see the option to open ZoomViewer from the Commons image page for this image. https://zoomviewer.toolforge.org/index.php?f=Quaternary_Geologic_Map_Minnesota.jpg&flash=no https://zoomviewer.toolforge.org/index.php?f=Quaternary_Geol... https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Gadget-ZoomViewer https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Gadget-ZoomViewer 1. See "Expand" tool here: https://digitalcollections.lib.washington.edu/digital/collection/ac/id/1009 https://digitalcollections.lib.washington.edu/digital/collec...
    • valleyer 4y ago
      What you're asking for should ideally be supplied by your Web browser, not by Wikipedia.
      • resonious 4y ago
        Right, I had no problem zooming and panning on Firefox.
    • callalex 4y ago
      Next you’re going to ask for JS scroll bars…
• makeworld 4y ago
  Unix Magic is pretty good. https://jpmens.net/2021/04/09/the-unix-magic-poster/ https://jpmens.net/2021/04/09/the-unix-magic-poster/
  • pram 4y ago
    I have one of these hanging in my living room, they're beautiful!
    • lygaret 4y ago
      On my wall behind me! :D https://photos.app.goo.gl/a4NSabFfPVU12Aw6A https://photos.app.goo.gl/a4NSabFfPVU12Aw6A
      • sophacles 4y ago
        I like your retro battlestation. How did you hook your c64 up to an LCD?
        • mdpye 4y ago
          Not the GP, but I have a composite / s-video to hdmi converter from ebay. You can get DIN to RCA or S-video (the C64 exposes seperate luma and chroma signals) cables for the C64 fairly easily as well. Picture quality is... fine.
        • eurasiantiger 4y ago
          Could be an Ultimate64.
  • robertlagrant 4y ago
    But which shell is it?
  • dddnzzz334 4y ago
    There is also UNIX Feud and Unix Views poster. All three are there in bonkers high quality at archive.org: https://archive.org/details/unix-magic https://archive.org/details/unix-magic Also see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27029196 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27029196
• Barrin92 4y ago
  Bret Victor's animated explanation of Abstraction: http://worrydream.com/LadderOfAbstraction/ http://worrydream.com/LadderOfAbstraction/ His approach to visualization is I think by far one of the best things on the internet. His rework of a classic paper on small world networks is fantastic as well: http://worrydream.com/ScientificCommunicationAsSequentialArt/ http://worrydream.com/ScientificCommunicationAsSequentialArt...
• motohagiography 4y ago
  Variations on mean time between failure curves: https://hpreliability.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Failure-Patterns.png https://hpreliability.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Failure... Comparing solutions based on the perceived reliability curves of their lifecycles is useful.
  • agumonkey 4y ago
    Fun chart, here's an article to explain a bit more (it was necessary for me) ps: https://reliableandefficient.com/2015/07/how-your-equipment-fail-failure-pattern/ https://reliableandefficient.com/2015/07/how-your-equipment-...
    • layer8 4y ago
      You forgot the link.
      • agumonkey 4y ago
        edited, thanks a lot
    • vestrigi 4y ago
      You forgot to include the article!
    • motohagiography 4y ago
      Amazing article. I wish I had found it when I searched for the image. It's such an important explanation.
• lkozma 4y ago
  May I add one that I made? Illustration of QuickSort and MergeSort as two sides of the same coin: http://lkozma.net/images/sort/duality.pdf http://lkozma.net/images/sort/duality.pdf I find this somehow both obvious and counter-intuitive, and usually the two algorithms are not presented in this way, as duals of each other. I wrote up this view in more detail, but the figure above should be self-explanatory: http://lkozma.net/blog/a-dual-view-of-sorting-algorithms/ http://lkozma.net/blog/a-dual-view-of-sorting-algorithms/
  • thanatos519 4y ago
    That is great and should be in every textbook!
  • raddan 4y ago
    There's an important distinction that your explanation glosses over, which is that MergeSort is an out-of-place sort while QuickSort is in-place. As a practical matter, this distinction is important and it makes the two algorithms not quite duals. Your explanation of why we can assume that QuickSort pivots are medians makes sense, but it also glosses over one of the deep insights about why QuickSort works at all, which is that with unsorted data, the choice of pivot will rarely be bad (it will be "near the middle on average.")
    • lkozma 4y ago
      Yes, this efficiency-aspect is not captured in the illustration -- while splitting perfectly _by index_ comes for free, splitting perfectly _by value_ needs nontrivial work (median-finding).
      • chongli 4y ago
        Yes and with naïve median-finding comes pathological inputs that hit the worst case O(n^2). Something to watch out for if you’re sorting user-provided input as that could open you up to some silly denial of service attacks!
  • ro_jazz 4y ago
• drewg123 4y ago
  The cover of the 1st edition of the "dragon book" -- Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools, by Aho, Sethi and Ullman https://www.amazon.com/Compilers-Principles-Techniques-Alfred-Aho/dp/0201100886 https://www.amazon.com/Compilers-Principles-Techniques-Alfre...
• void-star 4y ago
  I worked at several companies that had this poster hanging on the wall back in the day and spent a lot of time staring at it while on the phone. It comes immediately to mind. https://www.scribd.com/doc/223671868/Poster-Protocolos-1 https://www.scribd.com/doc/223671868/Poster-Protocolos-1
  • Eduard 4y ago
    More recent (2006) version without paywall: https://www.cisco.com/web/offer/emea/7193/docs/Agilent_Netzwerk.pdf https://www.cisco.com/web/offer/emea/7193/docs/Agilent_Netzw...
    • void-star 4y ago
      Thanks I had a hard time finding the original at all. I do remember it was specifically the one with the blue background in my case, though. Probably not “better” or even as accurate but it’s the one that really stuck out in my mind.
• gamegoblin 4y ago
  Log-structured merge trees have some good diagrams. If you know a little bit about the problem space, the 3 main diagrams (2.1, 2.2, 3.1) in the whitepaper basically tell you how to implement it. https://www.cs.umb.edu/~poneil/lsmtree.pdf https://www.cs.umb.edu/~poneil/lsmtree.pdf
• DubiousPusher 4y ago
  https://libraryofbabel.info/ https://libraryofbabel.info/
  • TurkishPoptart 4y ago
    I have no clue what's going on here. Context?
    • KMnO4 4y ago
      It’s based off a 1941 short story in which there’s a library of books which hold every possible combination of letters. The idea is that every story, song, piece of knowledge, etc are in there if you know where to find them. (And also, every erroneous fact, false story, etc)
  • abetusk 4y ago
    "The Library of Babel" by Jorge Luis Borges [0]. Borges was a direct influence on William Gibson most notably (to me at least) seen with the short story "The Aleph" by Borges [1]. Gibson had an "aleph" device simulating reality in "Mona Lisa Overdrive" (which many of the characters mispronounced as "LF" device). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Aleph_(short_story) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Aleph_(short_story)
  • kristopolous 4y ago
    There's another compsci tower of babel from 1969: https://archive.org/details/TNM_Programming_Languages_history_and_fundamental_20171115_0058/mode/1up https://archive.org/details/TNM_Programming_Languages_histor... On the right. It's also the cover art for the book Direct: https://ia800101.us.archive.org/BookReader/BookReaderImages.php?zip=/14/items/TNM_Programming_Languages_history_and_fundamental_20171115_0058/TNM_Programming_Languages_history_and_fundamental_20171115_0058_jp2.zip&file=TNM_Programming_Languages_history_and_fundamental_20171115_0058_jp2/TNM_Programming_Languages_history_and_fundamental_20171115_0058_0000.jp2&id=TNM_Programming_Languages_history_and_fundamental_20171115_0058&scale=1&rotate=0 https://ia800101.us.archive.org/BookReader/BookReaderImages....
• frakt0x90 4y ago
  Not strictly computer science, but I love this animation of a Fourier Series and I show it every time I have to explain it to somone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourier_series#/media/File:Fourier_series_and_transform.gif https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourier_series#/media/File:Fou...
  • booboofixer 4y ago
    You might also like: https://www.jezzamon.com/fourier/ https://www.jezzamon.com/fourier/
    • muziq 4y ago
      Ultimately leading to: https://xkcd.com/26/ https://xkcd.com/26/
• jonas-w 4y ago
  Don't know if it is the favorite of mine but AWS Architecture Diagrams. For example: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/a7/bc/49/a7bc49be1828ca9a51e4082c0a1fc798.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/originals/a7/bc/49/a7bc49be1828ca9a51e4... https://flexadata.com/images/architecture/ntier-application-2048x2048.png https://flexadata.com/images/architecture/ntier-application-... https://docs.mattermost.com/_images/MattermostDeployment5kaws.png https://docs.mattermost.com/_images/MattermostDeployment5kaw...
  • Someone 4y ago
    De gustibus non est disputandum, but I find these ugly. The icons draw too much attention, and (IMO) are incomprehensible. They have zillions of products, so I understand that not all their icons can be immediately recognizable, but is there meaning to the colors of icons? I can’t think of, for example, a reason why “Batch”, “CloudFront” and “Glacier” have the same color. Similarly, is there a language for recognizing icons? I don’t understand why EFS and CloudFront both are stacks of cubes, for example. I think I would choose the same colour and/or similar shapes for all icons that denote data stores (examples: S3, Glacier, RDS), for example, a different one for compute (examples: Lambda, EC2, Batch), and a third one for connections (load balancer, Route 53, CloudFront) Also, why are there such subtle differences in some of the colors? Do they mean something? Finally, if one of your 100+ products is called “S3” and you have to design a recognizable icon for it, how on earth can you not put a big “S” and a big “3” in that icon? It can’t be that they want to avoid text at all cost, as they wrote “Aurora” in an other icon.
    • bradwood 4y ago
      100% agree with you. The AWS icon/drawing design kit is just rubbish. It's super hard to read.
• Phemist 4y ago
  I, unfortunately, cannot find an online copy currently. Knuth's TAOCP's latest published part, Volume 4 Fascicle 6, on Satisfiability contains a number of visualizations that really are amazing and worth just buying a copy of the book for, just to ponder over these images. The satisfiability problem of whether there exists an assignment of boolean values that makes a given boolean formula evaluate to TRUE is, IMO, truly a fundamental problem in computer science. Any piece of code with some inputs and outputs can be transformed into a boolean formula (albeit a huge one). This process feels akin to expressing molecules, from simple ones like H2O, to the highly complex proteins that make up much of our Cells, in their constituent atoms and more importantly the atom interactions. Knuth (EDIT: Actually, Carsten Sinz) takes this concept one step further and produces visualizations of non-trivial boolean formulas that clearly show the regular, both symmetrical and asymmetrical, sometimes fractal-like nature of these formulas. In my mind, these visualizations are quite powerful and strikingly show the fundamental building blocks of (digital) computation.
  • varjag 4y ago
    The spread on page 300 (iirc) is really stunning.
    • LeonM 4y ago
      Page 116/117, to be precise ;-)
      • varjag 4y ago
        Not in my book! https://twitter.com/varjag/status/1603857439136292865/photo/1 https://twitter.com/varjag/status/1603857439136292865/photo/...
        • LeonM 4y ago
          Huh, that is odd! Which version of the book do you have?
          • 4y ago
• pcurve 4y ago
  maybe not CS concepts, but wanted to re-share Perpendicular disc storage from Hitachi. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xb_PyKuI7II https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xb_PyKuI7II It's a simple concept to explain, but animation sure makes it fun and lasting.
• cdnsteve 4y ago
  Xkcd, this one https://xkcd.com/303/ https://xkcd.com/303/
• sparkie 4y ago
  Differentiation of an algebraic data type, resulting in its zipper: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/Labyrinth-Finger.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/Labyrint... Explanation: https://en.m.wikibooks.org/wiki/Haskell/Zippers https://en.m.wikibooks.org/wiki/Haskell/Zippers (cites: http://strictlypositive.org/diff.pdf http://strictlypositive.org/diff.pdf)
  • giraffe_lady 4y ago
    oh shiiiiit lol. I get it. that never made intuitive sense to me before. that's a good one.
• itskeshavrai 4y ago
  breads
• jcadam 4y ago
  Learn You A Haskell is full of useful illustrations. http://learnyouahaskell.com/ http://learnyouahaskell.com/
• wendyshu 4y ago
  "A Self-Adjusting Search Tree" https://www.link.cs.cmu.edu/splay/#:~:text=A%20Self%2DAdjusting%20Search%20Tree https://www.link.cs.cmu.edu/splay/#:~:text=A%20Self%2DAdjust...
• enriquto 4y ago
  The two plots that explain Kernighan's lever: https://www.linusakesson.net/programming/kernighans-lever/ https://www.linusakesson.net/programming/kernighans-lever/
• omarshammas 4y ago
  I've been enjoying the illustrations at architecturenotes.co especially the posts about redis [1] and things you should know about databases [2] [1] https://architecturenotes.co/redis/ https://architecturenotes.co/redis/ [2] https://architecturenotes.co/things-you-should-know-about-databases/ https://architecturenotes.co/things-you-should-know-about-da...
• cromulent 4y ago
  Not useful, nor aesthetic perhaps. https://poignant.guide/images/the.foxes-2.png https://poignant.guide/images/the.foxes-2.png
• franze 4y ago
  I like the one from my book the best: https://www.fullstackoptimization.com/wp-content/uploads/systematic-seo-with-lables-high-res.png https://www.fullstackoptimization.com/wp-content/uploads/sys...
• mbaytas 4y ago
  A while back I made a small NFT collection with my favorite CS illustrations: https://instagram.com/citationsnft https://instagram.com/citationsnft It was an experiment that didn’t do much commercially, but we learned a lot from it.
  • mechanical_bear 4y ago
    Seems weird to make unique someone else’s work. How does that work from an IP standpoint?
    • realslimjd 4y ago
      It doesn't.
    • mbaytas 4y ago
      I re-drew the artwork based on the originals from the publications, it’s not copy-paste images. This, plus the fact that the original source is cited, makes it work.
• fredguth 4y ago
  Drawing of self adjusting trees by Jorge Stolfi. https://www.link.cs.cmu.edu/splay/tree5.jpg https://www.link.cs.cmu.edu/splay/tree5.jpg
• lkozma 4y ago
  My favorite artistic illustration is probably Jorge Stolfi's drawing inspired by the self-adjusting splay tree data structure of Sleator and Tarjan: https://www.link.cs.cmu.edu/splay/tree5.jpg https://www.link.cs.cmu.edu/splay/tree5.jpg
• bosch_mind 4y ago
  Grokking Algorithms is a funny and enjoyable read
• SmileyJames 4y ago
  I think the field of automata has some lovely diagrams. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automata_theory https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automata_theory I'm sure many are familiar with state diagrams, directed graphs that can be used to explain regular expressions or any other FSM Turing machines also can be represented with a diagram featuring a "tape" - so elegant Professor Rick Thomas made a great impression on me whilst lecturing on the subject of Automata
• binarymax 4y ago
  Everything from Land of Lisp! http://landoflisp.com/ http://landoflisp.com/
• rfonseca 4y ago
  In Networking, two illustrations of congestion control are just fantastic IMO. First one is [1], by Chiu and Jain (page 7, figure 5), showing that Additive Increase / Multiplicative decrease is the only simple policy that converges among 2 senders (with rates x and y) to a rate that is fair (along the y=x diagonal) and efficient (along the x+y=Bandwidth). This is the basis of the algorithm that made TCP (and the Internet as we know it today) possible. The other one is this diagram from BBR [2] (from the paper in [3]), that shows how BBR sets the window ("amount in flight") to the bandwidth-delay product (BDP) of the bottleneck link (the "volume" of the pipe in a water analogy). The cool thing is that you can only measure the delay of the link if you window is <= the BDP, and you can only measure the bandwidth if your window is >= the BDP, so the algorithm has to hover around this point to make sure it can determine both. [1] Chiu and Jain, Analysis of the Increase and Decrease Algorithms for Congestion Avoidance in Computer Networks, 1989, https://www.cse.wustl.edu/~jain/papers/ftp/cong_av.pdf https://www.cse.wustl.edu/~jain/papers/ftp/cong_av.pdf [2] https://dl.acm.org/cms/attachment/9cf72499-b32d-4426-914b-cdf75b870cff/vanjacobson1.png https://dl.acm.org/cms/attachment/9cf72499-b32d-4426-914b-cd... [3] BBR: Congestion-Based Congestion Control https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3022184 https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3022184
  • mhandley 4y ago
    Chiu-Jain plots are great for getting a grasp of AIMD. Another related one I like is the figure illustrating ack-clocking in Van Jacobson's original congestion control paper - Figure 1 here: https://ee.lbl.gov/papers/congavoid.pdf https://ee.lbl.gov/papers/congavoid.pdf
    • rfonseca 4y ago
      This is great indeed, and makes it for 2 illustrations from Van Jacobson's papers, separated by 28 years! (The 1988 paper and the 2016 BBR paper)
• adrianmonk 4y ago
  I like railroad diagrams for language grammars. So much easier than just looking at production rules. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntax_diagram https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntax_diagram They're used at https://json.org/ https://json.org/, for example.
  • salgernon 4y ago
    The Apple Pascal poster has a very 70s vibe: https://www.whatisepic.it/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/apple_pascal_syntax.jpg https://www.whatisepic.it/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/apple_p...
    • bagels 4y ago
      It's not very useful as a technical reference. The text is so de-emphasized in comparison to the graph, it's impossible to read.
      • thristian 4y ago
        > Instead of learning how Raskin’s color scheme worked, Jobs hired an artist, San Francisco’s Tom Kamifuji, who was a hot, up-and-coming artist in the late 70’s / early 80’s. Jobs gave him free reign to make it more artistic, though Jobs failed to explain that the original color scheme was important for using the chart easily. — https://vintagecomputer.ca/the-history-of-apples-pascal-syntax-poster-1979-80/ https://vintagecomputer.ca/the-history-of-apples-pascal-synt...
  • gpderetta 4y ago
    Ah they are called railroad diagrams, it makes sense. I first saw the in sqlite documentation [1]. Thanks for giving them a name! [1] https://www.sqlite.org/lang_select.html https://www.sqlite.org/lang_select.html
    • markandrewj 4y ago
      Another place that uses this style of diagram is the original JSON spec. https://www.json.org/json-en.html https://www.json.org/json-en.html
• lastofthemojito 4y ago
  Not as academic as some of the other replies, and certainly not all of them are CS-related, but Bartosz Ciechanowski's interactive web illustrations are fantastic examples of modern visuals. Things like: GPS: https://ciechanow.ski/gps/ https://ciechanow.ski/gps/ Alpha Compositing: https://ciechanow.ski/alpha-compositing/ https://ciechanow.ski/alpha-compositing/ Floating Point numbers: https://ciechanow.ski/exposing-floating-point/ https://ciechanow.ski/exposing-floating-point/
  • wlesieutre 4y ago
    I love these, the mechanical watch post is a favorite of mine. https://ciechanow.ski/mechanical-watch/ https://ciechanow.ski/mechanical-watch/ It's the sort of interactive educational content that I always imagined computers and the internet would be amazing for, it just never panned out at a large scale. Maybe not easy enough to create, maybe not profitable enough, who knows.
  • rramadass 4y ago
    Everything by Bartosz Ciechanowski is great. Truly one of the few who understands that diagrams/animations are a crucial aid to understanding.
• kiernanmcgowan 4y ago
  Not from the CS world, but I've always enjoyed the Smith Chart. It's a tool to figure out impedance (eg resistance but a complex number) matching on a boundary to reduce reflected power. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_chart https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_chart
  • swimfar 4y ago
    I love nomographs. My favorite is this Van-der-Pol nomograph that calculates asphalt stiffness for different temperatures, penetration amplitudes, and loading rates. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Hasan-Al-Mosawe/publication/310626736/figure/fig2/AS:431241901154306@1479827489877/Van-der-Poel-Nomograph.png https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Hasan-Al-Mosawe/publica...
• sophacles 4y ago
  I often cite this diagram: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/Netfilter-packet-flow.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/Netfilte... as my favorite picture. It shows the logical flow of packets through Linux. I'm pretty sure my career would be on a very different trajectory had I not discovered an earlier version of it back in ~2006.
  • CurleighBraces 4y ago
    This is great. Don't suppose you've seen anything similar for the flow when you include SR-IOV/DPKD a google didn't help.
    • sophacles 4y ago
      Sadly I have not. I've been on the lookout though. I've also considered adding annotations for ebpf hooks to this one, but that turns out to be rather difficult to keep up with too.
    • suncore 4y ago
      DPDK/SRIOV eats the interface so Linux kernel does not see it at all. The above diagram is kind of irrelevant as it would look like a giant bypass.
• zX41ZdbW 4y ago
  The relations between Hilbert Curves[1], Gray Code, De Bruijn sequences[2]... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert_curve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert_curve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Bruijn_sequence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Bruijn_sequence I want to make use of it in ClickHouse, but we did not (yet), see https://github.com/ClickHouse/ClickHouse/issues/41195 https://github.com/ClickHouse/ClickHouse/issues/41195
• devniel 4y ago
  The glider
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• bjornsing 4y ago
  If you include deep learning in CS then https://distill.pub/ https://distill.pub/ has a lot to offer in this category.
• adrianmonk 4y ago
  For network communication (and other stuff), I like sequence diagrams: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequence_diagram https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequence_diagram There's a standardized UML version of this, but I think it's easier to read when the arrows are sloped a little, like in this random example: https://www.graffletopia.com/stencils/1560 https://www.graffletopia.com/stencils/1560
• nlolks 4y ago
  Funny one. . . http://gunshowcomic.com/648 http://gunshowcomic.com/648
• thewizardofaus 4y ago
  Diffie-Hellman key exchange pictures that use mixing colours to illustrate the concept.
  • Manozco 4y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffie%E2%80%93Hellman_key_exchange#/media/File:Diffie-Hellman_Key_Exchange.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffie%E2%80%93Hellman_key_exc...
• rodolphoarruda 4y ago
  Not only related to CS, but to most management areas and life as a whole. Going from state(A) to state(B) should never be that complicated, right? Oversimplification at its prime. https://www.thelogocreative.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/How-to-draw-an-owl.png https://www.thelogocreative.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/How-to-...
• rg111 4y ago
  Anything from Setosa [0] is really good. It contains interactive, animated illustrations of several Machine Learning ideas. I _loved_ reading papers from Distill Pub [1] as they contained interactive diagrams. My most favorite one so far is the thread on Differentiable Self-organizing Systems [2]. I liked the lizard example very much as it is interactive, and lizards grow lost organs back. I think this is funny. [0]: https://setosa.io https://setosa.io [1]: https://distill.pub https://distill.pub [2]: https://distill.pub/2020/selforg/ https://distill.pub/2020/selforg/
• DoneWithAllThat 4y ago
  Oh man a friend of mine used to have a shirt with a delightful illustration of the madness that is ATM, or maybe it was just illustrating IP-over-ATM. It had packets being like thrown into woodchippers and reassembled if I’m remembering right. Wish I could find it again.
• typhonic 4y ago
  What came to my mind is "An Introduction to Microcomputers" by Adam Osborne. I don't think I can find my copy anymore. If I remember correctly, there were block diagrams showing the main functional components of a microcomputer, E.G. the ALU, Arithmetic Logic Unit.
• tudorw 4y ago
  http://www.thetednelson.com/art_intertwingled.png http://www.thetednelson.com/art_intertwingled.png
• birdymcbird 4y ago
  Time space diagrams in distributed systems. Very obvious once you see but never before saw some critical problems in distributed systems like fifo ordering, causal ordering and other things explained with such diagrams. did not have formal education on distributed systems in my country but learned many things in this topic on job. So then me took course by lindsey kuper on youtube. it is amazing course, super clear instructor even for me with not good english. i think professor in this class say these diagrams came from leslie lamport who did lot essential thinking in distributed system space
• handspun 4y ago
  Centralized, Decentralized and Distributed Networking https://www.rand.org/content/rand/pubs/research_memoranda/RM3420/_jcr_content/par/product/par-research-brief/wrapperdiv/imagewithclass.aspectfit.0x0.gif/1612812901809.gif https://www.rand.org/content/rand/pubs/research_memoranda/RM...
• camel_Snake 4y ago
  arbital's article on Bayes Theorem contains a waterfall diagram that just perfectly encapsulates the idea, at least to me. Linking the whole article but if you scroll it's the 5th image. https://arbital.com/p/bayes_rule/?l=693 https://arbital.com/p/bayes_rule/?l=693
• nostromo123 4y ago
  The Tanenbaum books on operating systems [1] and networks [2]. Here are just two samples, the various editions each have their slightly different illustrations. I've always found it really awesome how the cover of a book can clarify concepts in such a funny and concise way :) [1] https://www.amazon.com/Modern-Operating-Systems-Andrew-Tanenbaum/dp/013359162X https://www.amazon.com/Modern-Operating-Systems-Andrew-Tanen... [2] https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Networks-2-downloads-Andrew-Tanenbaum-ebook/dp/B08GFVSKTQ https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Networks-2-downloads-Andrew-...
• nosequel 4y ago
  "What The Hell Have You Built" a classic from the NoSQL / Big Data / Distributed Systems heyday of the early 2010's https://i.imgur.com/TOoXyVs.png https://i.imgur.com/TOoXyVs.png
• coletonodonnell 4y ago
  I absolutely adore this Dilbert comic, not really strictly Computer Science nor illustrating a concept, but I think it is pretty funny. https://dilbert.com/strip/1995-06-24 https://dilbert.com/strip/1995-06-24
  • theideaofcoffee 4y ago
    The cover of the second edition of Stevens’ “Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment” has that strip on its cover. [0]. Love it. [0] https://www.amazon.com/Programming-Environment-Addison-Wesley-Professional-Computing/dp/0321525949 https://www.amazon.com/Programming-Environment-Addison-Wesle...
• koshergweilo 4y ago
  I don't know how useful it is, but this depiction of a lexical scanner in Bob Nystrom's Crafting Interpreters always stuck with me. https://craftinginterpreters.com/image/scanning/lexigator.png https://craftinginterpreters.com/image/scanning/lexigator.pn...
• layer8 4y ago
  The pumping lemma [0] nested triangles is one of my favorites: https://iq.opengenus.org/content/images/2021/09/pumping-lemma-cfg.png https://iq.opengenus.org/content/images/2021/09/pumping-lemm... [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumping_lemma_for_context-free_languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumping_lemma_for_context-free...
• Sosh101 4y ago
  The old Usborne books as a kid https://www.fastcompany.com/3056519/design-lessons-from-the-amazing-1980s-books-that-taught-a-generation-of-kids-to-code https://www.fastcompany.com/3056519/design-lessons-from-the-... They released them as free pdfs a while back, but I can't find it now. Looks like they stopped that.
  • dansanderson 4y ago
    Great choice! Looks like they're officially up after a brief hiatus: https://usborne.com/us/books/computer-and-coding-books https://usborne.com/us/books/computer-and-coding-books
• ac50hz 4y ago
  https://dilbert.com/strip/2006-02-01 https://dilbert.com/strip/2006-02-01
• 4silvertooth 4y ago
  https://github.com/girliemac/a-picture-is-worth-a-1000-words https://github.com/girliemac/a-picture-is-worth-a-1000-words Specially the git-purr one that explains git.
• EamonnMR 4y ago
  Wikipedia's animated illustrations of sorting algorithms are awesome: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quicksort https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quicksort
• andrewfromx 4y ago
  https://rxmarbles.com/ https://rxmarbles.com/ and http://neilpa.me/rac-marbles/ http://neilpa.me/rac-marbles/
• tb0ne 4y ago
  This gif explaining aliasing completely intuitively, without any words or symbols: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nyquist_Shannon_theorem_sine_visualisation_animation.gif https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nyquist_Shannon_theo...
• haunter 4y ago
  The “I wan to run an agile project” animation https://youtu.be/4u5N00ApR_k https://youtu.be/4u5N00ApR_k Nothing comes close to this, sums up the whole idea from bottom to the top perfectly
  • i_like_apis 4y ago
    Thought this was pretty bad. The leading parodies were straw man examples of “agile project”. The author certainly seems to hate “agile” but doesn’t have any critiques for it. Instead he’s punching at ghosts.
• cirrus3 4y ago
  TCP Windowing
  • anjanb 4y ago
    which diagram/illustration were you referring to ?
• btschaegg 4y ago
  I can't really come up with any good illustrations for something complex off the top of my head, so I'll go for a really simple one. In fact, that's part of its beauty. When I had to deal with the signals from a rotary encoder the first time (being a programmer with two left hands and zero hardware affinity), I had a look at a couple of C libraries but didn't have the patience to slog through their implementations in order to understand what signals they were decoding. ...until I saw this: https://github.com/PaulStoffregen/Encoder/blob/master/Encoder.h#L162 https://github.com/PaulStoffregen/Encoder/blob/master/Encode... I'm not sure if it was this exact library, but that's the comment I saw. Nice and obvious, in contrast to all the obscure attempts to convey what was happening all the other libs made through prose comments.
• tptacek 4y ago
  https://bost.ocks.org/mike/algorithms/ https://bost.ocks.org/mike/algorithms/
• mrslave 4y ago
  Programmer interrupted https://heeris.id.au/2013/this-is-why-you-shouldnt-interrupt-a-programmer/ https://heeris.id.au/2013/this-is-why-you-shouldnt-interrupt... (mirror) https://i.pinimg.com/originals/23/b0/75/23b075bebdcea554929b6e2b46d89221.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/originals/23/b0/75/23b075bebdcea554929b...
  • nkantar 4y ago
    I love that one, and this perhaps more educational take: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/pafo1v/understanding_developer_interruptions/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/pafo1v/und... (direct) https://i.redd.it/e7ltreiv98j71.png https://i.redd.it/e7ltreiv98j71.png
    • IMTDb 4y ago
      So unplanned interruptions affect programmers less than planned ones ? Next time I need to talk to a dev, I'll be sure to pop to their desk unannounced rather than trying to find a suitable time beforehand then ! /s
      • nkantar 4y ago
        That doesn’t account for the loss of goodwill, risky strategy!
• _8j50 4y ago
  Does this count? https://www.kaspersky.com/content/en-global/images/repository/pr/turla-satellites-600-493.png https://www.kaspersky.com/content/en-global/images/repositor... I don't think it needs explanation. Pretty wild.
  • Eduard 4y ago
    It needs explanation
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• tjchear 4y ago
  Shameless plug: I drew 36 illustrations of various data structures from simple ones like stack and binary trees to advanced ones like skip list and Merkle tree, and sell them as collectible card decks [0]. Use code HAPPY23 to save 15%. [0] https://cs.cards https://cs.cards
  • AnonHP 4y ago
    Quick thoughts: Nice effort, and the format of the diagrams looks good. I do find the description close to impossible to read due to the use of all caps, monospace and most of all, lack of line spacing. I haven’t thought more on this, but within the constraints of the card sizes if this part could be improved, that’d be great.
    • tjchear 4y ago
      Thanks for the feedback! I'll incorporate these suggestions in the next version.
  • shmde 4y ago
    Is it possible to ship to India ? Unfortunately I don't see it in the checkout page.
    • tjchear 4y ago
      Can you email me at hello@cs.cards along with a screenshot? This is something determined by Shopify and I did not set anything that specifically leaves out India as a shipping destination.
• namuol 4y ago
  Anything from Red Blob Games: https://www.redblobgames.com/ https://www.redblobgames.com/
• heikkilevanto 4y ago
  I guess someone has to mention the Periodic Table of Perl-6 operators: https://www.ozonehouse.com/mark/periodic/ https://www.ozonehouse.com/mark/periodic/
• rramadass 4y ago
  No CS but Mathematics. A series of videos/animations by Welch Labs; Imaginary Numbers are Real - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiaHhY2iBX9g6KIvZ_703G3KJXapKkNaF https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiaHhY2iBX9g6KIvZ_703... The above presentation in pdf: https://www.welchlabs.com/resources https://www.welchlabs.com/resources This is the first teaching video/animation which wowed me (i prefer hard copy books).
• stuart78 4y ago
  This comic by Rory Blyth is my personal favorite: http://wyorock.com/excelasadatabase.htm http://wyorock.com/excelasadatabase.htm
• wardedVibe 4y ago
  Does Hungarian dancers implementing sorting algorithms count as an illustration? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdIKIf9mHk0&list=PLOmdoKois7_FK-ySGwHBkltzB11snW7KQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdIKIf9mHk0&list=PLOmdoKois7...
• seFausto 4y ago
  https://9gag.com/gag/ayd9jRb https://9gag.com/gag/ayd9jRb I really like this comic. Mainly the "Testing in production" near the bottom right. It mocks agile in it's different forms.
• heystefan 4y ago
  Anything by Maggie Appleton. For example: https://maggieappleton.com/databases https://maggieappleton.com/databases
• sanvital 4y ago
  I drew a 9 page DTM that implemented binary multiplication for an assignment in a CS class at USC (southern cal) in the mid-90's. It is my favorite CS illustration. However, I am certain that no one else would be interested in it, as it is very specific, archaic, and personal.
• MichaelMoser123 4y ago
  tcp/ip state transition diagram (over here: https://users.cs.northwestern.edu/~agupta/cs340/project2/TCPIP_State_Transition_Diagram.pdf https://users.cs.northwestern.edu/~agupta/cs340/project2/TCP... ) however it takes a while to get all the details...
• m463 4y ago
  I think of this one: https://archive.org/details/unix-magic-poster-gary-overcare-1 https://archive.org/details/unix-magic-poster-gary-overcare-...
• abetusk 4y ago
  A visualization of the basis functions for the discrete cosine transform by Brian Hayes in his American Scientist post a long time ago [0]. For some reason, Fourier transforms just didn't click until I saw that picture. [0] http://bit-player.org/wp-content/extras/bph-publications/AmSci-1999-05-Hayes-Pointillism.pdf http://bit-player.org/wp-content/extras/bph-publications/AmS...
• insaider 4y ago
  http://www.r2d3.us/visual-intro-to-machine-learning-part-1/ http://www.r2d3.us/visual-intro-to-machine-learning-part-1/ This one will stay with me for life i think Though perhaps more of a visualization than an illustration
  • compscistd 4y ago
    This would be perfect, but in English, the description on the left refers to graph points in Meters while the visuals' data points are in feet.
    • mkl 4y ago
      Not only that, but they're different measurements: 242.8 feet is 74.005 metres, not 73m.
• brailsafe 4y ago
  Not an illustration, but I really like the Hungarian Algorythmics videos
• wglb 4y ago
  Likely the diagram of the multiphase multi-tape sort diagram that was a foldout in the first edition of TAoCP. As tape fades from memory and usage, the diagram has been removed. It is a sentimental favorite of mine as tape was important in the early part of my career.
• eschutoco404 4y ago
  I really like the diagrams from Refactoring.Guru. They provide clear representation of what the design patterns are solving, along with real world analogies. Example with factories: https://refactoring.guru/design-patterns/factory-method https://refactoring.guru/design-patterns/factory-method
• eastdakota 4y ago
  The Elliptic Curve explainer GIF in this blog post: https://blog.cloudflare.com/a-relatively-easy-to-understand-primer-on-elliptic-curve-cryptography/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/a-relatively-easy-to-understand-... Maybe this image if the URL doesn’t get munged: https://blog.cloudflare.com/cdn-cgi/mirage/551bd7d005a1232db7f193672a018a6b3c436645212d0958c39fbaf676197d4b/1280/https://blog.cloudflare.com/content/images/image02.gif https://blog.cloudflare.com/cdn-cgi/mirage/551bd7d005a1232db...
• mov 4y ago
  SICP cover: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/SICP_cover.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/SICP_cov...
• hot_gril 4y ago
  The classic sorting algo videos with sound come to mind first: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPRA0W1kECg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPRA0W1kECg . Mergesort is my favorite video. The main resource on learning Erlang, https://learnyousomeerlang.com https://learnyousomeerlang.com, has a lot of funny ones, some of which are useful.
  • makapuf 4y ago
    i also love this page, comparing different sorting animations for different use cases such as random, almost sorted, ... https://www.toptal.com/developers/sorting-algorithms https://www.toptal.com/developers/sorting-algorithms
• dsQTbR7Y5mRHnZv 4y ago
  The list monster from _Learn you a Haskell_: http://s3.amazonaws.com/lyah/listmonster.png http://s3.amazonaws.com/lyah/listmonster.png
• swapsCAPS 4y ago
  I’ve always found https://rxmarbles.com https://rxmarbles.com, illustrating rx functionality pretty neat
• 082349872349872 4y ago
  From Gödel Escher Bach: Figure 40. (a collage of scripts, demonstrating how meaning can be carried in strings of [many different choices of sets of] symbols: compare Turing or Shannon) Figures 135 & 136. (Escher's Drawing Hands, followed by a structural sketch showing how the paradox of mutual recursion can be solved by something implicit and prior to both: compare McCarthy or Curry's Y combinator)
• makach 4y ago
  I am a little bit surprised that there isn’t more references to cartoons, especially xkcd
• vroomik 4y ago
  I'd really like to see more eye pleasing version of this, but those symmetries are wild - Quasi-periodicity 17 fold symmetry - https://www.goldennumber.net/quasi-crystals/#jp-carousel-9887 https://www.goldennumber.net/quasi-crystals/#jp-carousel-988...
• 082349872349872 4y ago
  From Feynman Lectures on Computation: Figure 7.64 "Circuit diagram for a PLA", which demonstrates how the logical duality between AND and OR is reflected, at the physical gate level, by a π/4 rotation between encode and decode planes.
• 082349872349872 4y ago
  From Transaction Processing: Concepts and Techniques: Figure 2.3 (also inside the front hardcover) "The Price/Performance Tradeoff" A diptych of size vs. cost, and latency vs. cost, for various storage technologies (in 1990. that said, the shape of the curves has not changed much in 3 decades; only the absolute numbers are out of date) (FWIW, the "tape robot" streamed architecture they predicted has indeed come to pass; it's just that we use network flows instead of tape robots as our stream endpoints)
• weswilson 4y ago
  The sound of dial-up explained: https://oona.windytan.com/posters/dialup-final.png https://oona.windytan.com/posters/dialup-final.png from https://www.windytan.com/2012/11/the-sound-of-dialup-pictured.html https://www.windytan.com/2012/11/the-sound-of-dialup-picture...
  • niceworkbuddy 4y ago
    Never forget :')
    • m4jor 4y ago
      Eternal September
  • Dalewyn 4y ago
    I pity the youngsters who will never be able to mentally playback the dialup sound.
    • matematico 4y ago
      Same here! I played it in my mind while looking at the picture. Wow, we're so old school!
    • atoav 4y ago
      I grew up after that sound, but I can mentally play back a dialup sound purely because it is used in every second show, podcast, documentary on computers.
    • piyush_soni 4y ago
      I still remember the small adrenaline rush we had as soon as we would detect the tone for a successful connection.
      • lapama 4y ago
        That instant was unique for human-tech interaction. Perhaps comparable with becoming positively viral, but at small scale.
• Dalewyn 4y ago
  The progress graphic in the Disk Defragmenter tool shipped with Windows 95 and Windows 98.
  • once_inc 4y ago
    Ah, my sweetest memories are of getting the whole family on the couch, grabbing some popcorn, pouring some soft drinks and watching Windows 95 defragment my disk for three hours as soothing chirps and hums emanate from the grey box beneath the monitor.
• hienchu 4y ago
  My favorite is the JSON syntax diagram https://www.json.org/json-en.html https://www.json.org/json-en.html
• Galanwe 4y ago
  Absolutely loved the illustrations from https://pikuma.com/blog/isometric-projection-in-games https://pikuma.com/blog/isometric-projection-in-games about isometric projections in games. A work of art, and engineering.
• dmoreno 4y ago
  My favorite is more a small presentation than an image: Admiral Grace Hoper Explains a Nanosecond. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eyFDBPk4Yw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eyFDBPk4Yw For me it changed my mind on wasting time on less efficient algorithms.
• nickcw 4y ago
  My favorite illustration is from Thinking Forth by Leo Brodie. Here is a link to an article with my favorite picture from the book as its main image: https://hackerboss.com/thinking-forth-the-unsung-classic/ https://hackerboss.com/thinking-forth-the-unsung-classic/ It shows the "Universal Processor" which looks like a cross between a computer and a liquidizer and has a big knob on the front with "Data", "Word", "Food" on it! It is a humorous illustration of "An overgeneralized solution". In fact Thinking Forth has lots of great humorous cartoons and super insights into making real software that it is still a good read today. You'll learn a bit of Forth too! I read this book at a formative age, and despite not writing a great deal of Forth code, the philosophy of this book has stuck with me. Here is a link where you can get an electronic copy as it is out of print now and Leo Brodie has graciously allowed it to be distributed under the Creative Commons license. https://thinking-forth.sourceforge.net/ https://thinking-forth.sourceforge.net/
• matsemann 4y ago
  Code Cartoons by Lin Clark. https://hacks.mozilla.org/category/code-cartoons/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/category/code-cartoons/
• ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
  My fave is the “aging” diagram[0], for software bugs, from Steve McConnell’s famous Software Quality at Top Speed essay[1]. [0] https://stevemcconnell.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/art04-1.gif https://stevemcconnell.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/art04-... [1] https://stevemcconnell.com/articles/software-quality-at-top-speed/ https://stevemcconnell.com/articles/software-quality-at-top-... (The illustrations are slightly broken. You need to tap|click on the placeholder, to display the image).
• znpy 4y ago
  Weird that no one seems to have mentioned the Unix Wizard poster: https://jpmens.net/2021/04/09/the-unix-magic-poster/ https://jpmens.net/2021/04/09/the-unix-magic-poster/
• rottc0dd 4y ago
  There are some great visualizations by 3b1b: https://www.3blue1brown.com/ https://www.3blue1brown.com/ Recently he had done a video about convolution. And his videos about neural networks are pretty good. He has recommendation video for other good channels too. Great blog on Myers diff series: https://blog.jcoglan.com/2017/02/12/the-myers-diff-algorithm-part-1/ https://blog.jcoglan.com/2017/02/12/the-myers-diff-algorithm... Not technical illustrations but, some funny jokes in unix haters handbook is pretty funny. https://web.mit.edu/~simsong/www/ugh.pdf https://web.mit.edu/~simsong/www/ugh.pdf There is also unix magic poster: https://archive.org/details/unix-magic-poster-gary-overcare-1 https://archive.org/details/unix-magic-poster-gary-overcare-...
  • supernova87a 4y ago
    The video on FFT finally, after decades of casual understanding, helped me better understand what it was all about.
    • signaru 4y ago
      While on the topic of FFT, the "butterfly diagram" sure is profound, although it takes me effort to wrap my head around it to make it a personal favorite in the same way that other illustrations make things click to me.
• martopix 4y ago
  Various things explained without words in the same style as IKEA mounting instructions. Here is public key cryptography: https://idea-instructions.com/public-key/ https://idea-instructions.com/public-key/ and quicksort (KVICK SÖRT) https://idea-instructions.com/quick-sort/ https://idea-instructions.com/quick-sort/
  • largolagrande 4y ago
    Concerning the public key cryptography for the exchange of private encrypted messages, I would have rather represented the shared public keys by padlocks, and the private key by the key allowing to open the padlocks. This way, it is easier to understand that there is a relationship between the two keys. In his drawing, 2 different keys can open the safe door, which is not possible in the physical world...
    • kulhur 4y ago
      What about signed messages? Then the private key is the padlock and the public key is the... key.
    • quietdean 4y ago
      Just to let you know, out of interest, you can have two different keys for a physical lock. It's how master-keying works.
    • rmetzler 4y ago
      I like this visual explanation of the Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffie%E2%80%93Hellman_key_exchange#/media/File:Diffie-Hellman_Key_Exchange.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffie%E2%80%93Hellman_key_exc...
      • fknorangesite 4y ago
        Yeah I've always liked this video explaining D-H using the same paint-mixing metaphor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEBfamv-_do https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEBfamv-_do
• Febra33 4y ago
  I really like this ELF format diagram (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executable_and_Linkable_Format#/media/File:ELF_Executable_and_Linkable_Format_diagram_by_Ange_Albertini.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executable_and_Linkable_Format...)
• filter_coffee 4y ago
  All the basics of computer science and algos explained brilliantly https://medium.com/basecs https://medium.com/basecs
• klntsky 4y ago
  Definitely not my favorite, but useful enough. A cheatsheet for `lens` haskell library: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wiki/ekmett/lens/images/Hierarchy.png https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wiki/ekmett/lens/images/Hi...
• nielsbosma 4y ago
  Sorting out sorting is a classic! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnQMDkUFzh4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnQMDkUFzh4
• eterevsky 4y ago
  I have the opposite: my most hated illustration. It's the standard diagram of how Transformer language model works (https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Transformer-Language-Model-Structure-Vaswani-et-al-2017-3_fig3_357660800 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Transformer-Language-Mod...). When I tried to figure out transformers, I saw it in every single paper, and it didn't help almost at all. I think I finally got a good understanding only when I looked at a few implementations.
  • YetAnotherNick 4y ago
    Also it is wrong. The paper has add and norm, but the official implementation and all other good implementation has pre norm architecture: https://twitter.com/francoisfleuret/status/1467135366503219205?lang=en https://twitter.com/francoisfleuret/status/14671353665032192...
• chrisbuc 4y ago
  https://xkcd.com/627/ https://xkcd.com/627/ (Tech Support Cheat Sheet)
• oznog 4y ago
  Bitcoin Hashmap https://nakamoto.observer/hashmap https://nakamoto.observer/hashmap
• jdefr89 4y ago
  Ever wanted to look inside of a CPU executing code? http://visual6502.org/JSSim/index.html http://visual6502.org/JSSim/index.html
• autophagian 4y ago
  Not as exciting as many others, but I always have a soft spot for the old centralised/decentralised/distributed systems diagram: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Christopher-Ehmke-2/publication/334170377/figure/fig2/AS:776214553821186@1562075379877/Distinction-between-centralized-decentralized-and-distributed-systems-according-to-Baran.ppm https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Christopher-Ehmke-2/pub... It was my first introduction into actually thinking about and working with distributed systems at University, a field I've been in love with since, so it seems quite formative. Plus I always thought aesthetically it looks lovely, like it'd make a good tattoo.
• bobe__ 4y ago
  I love these mechanical mechanisms animations: https://mechamechanisms.com/ https://mechamechanisms.com/
• rottc0dd 4y ago
  And also every article in this website: https://ciechanow.ski/gps/ https://ciechanow.ski/gps/
• vagab0nd 4y ago
  SSH tunnels: https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/115906 https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/115906
• LLcolD 4y ago
  Diagrams that show LDA, STA, cycles, etc. Like this one -> https://iitestudent.blogspot.com/2011/06/timing-diagram-for-lda-and-sta.html https://iitestudent.blogspot.com/2011/06/timing-diagram-for-...
  • hcarvalhoalves 4y ago
    https://plantuml.com/timing-diagram https://plantuml.com/timing-diagram
    • LLcolD 4y ago
      Wow. Didn't ever think that there is something like this. I've heard about UML, but I've always thought that it is something related only to programming.
• greggarious 4y ago
  The "cascading failure" GIF[1] from Wikipedia's entry of the same name[2]. (I'd love to see similar style animations of various crypto algorithms like MD5, AES, etc if anyone has the cycles.) [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/Networkfailure.gif https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/Networkf... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascading_failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascading_failure
• wes-k 4y ago
  Martin Fowlers diagram on the cost of presumptive features / YAGNI. It nicely breaks down the costs, whether it’s the right feature or not! https://martinfowler.com/bliki/Yagni.html https://martinfowler.com/bliki/Yagni.html (Scroll a bit).