This is the source for my online book Superuser. Visit the live site here.
While there may be a class of people who are incapable of grokking computers, I think that the size of this class is substantially smaller than the class of people who currently struggle with computer operation. I think that much of the confusion, frustration, and fear that people can feel towards computers stems from a fundamental ignorance of the machines' nature.
Even though the fundamentals of computation are conceptually simple and ostensibly available to anyone with an internet connection, there is a steep learning curve to acquiring this knowledge. I believe this difficulty comes from a variety of factors:
- The popularity of "user-friendly" designs that obfuscate the inner workings of computers
- The emphasis on higher-level, practical dimensions (i.e. application/web design) that assumes (or ignores) understanding of foundational topics
- The abundance of technical terminology that distracts from the simple principles at play
For this reason, I decided to make a book that took an entirely foundational approach to the topic of computers - a book that anyone with enough intelligence and determination could use to break into the world of expert computer users. I have a few vague guidelines that I try to stick to:
- I try to introduce terminology only once the reader should have enough knowledge to fully understand it
- I try to cover fundamental topics even if they have little practical value. For example, my book starts off with a discussion of Turing machines. Not terribly practical, but essential for a fundamental understanding of computers.
- I try not to hurry. Computers are deeply complex machines, and it takes some patience to understand them.
- I try to resist the temptation to create a complete guide to computers, since the reader will need to learn self-reliance and be able to fill in gaps in their knowledge
- I try to keep things interesting, fun, and well-motivated. The goal is for the book to be easy to read without dumbing things down and insulting the reader's intelligence