A case study: “Introduction to Computer Science using Java”

I’m studying Software Engineering at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg. We took this introductory course in object oriented programming with Java earlier this fall, and as the exam approached I browser around the web for better studying resources than the course literature we had. I stumbled upon this site:

“Introduction to Computer Science using Java” →
http://chortle.ccsu.edu/CS151/cs151java.html

Mirror: http://programmedlessons.org/java5/index.html

It’s apparently an intro course to Java, given by a Bradley Kjell at Central Connecticut University.

How do you feel about the index page? It’s rather dull and “undesigned”, right? We’ll dig deeper, and I’ll show you why this site is so awesome.

Information structure

If you scroll down you’ll see the different parts of the course listed, and each sub-chapter is named so you’re instantly able to distinguish the type of information given in the chapter. I really like the way all the chapters are listed: no complex menus or navigation. Instead, information is presented in a simple and consise way. Simplicity. That’s what the whole web site screams.

Choosing a chapter takes you to a page where the chapter overview is presented: what’s to be covered. Also note the questions at the bottom of each page in every chapter. Those are great for learning; not showing you the answer right away, but instead let’s you ponder over the solution and then check the next page for the seeked solution.

The pages includes body text, tables, figures and code boxes (sample). I want to highlight the recursion section as a great example on how you should construct educational tools.

Features and interaction

• On some pages you’re asked to fill in blanks with expressions.
• Other pages includes interactive diagrams (!) where you click on the image to advance through the steps of the code. If you want to wrap your head around recursion, that method is great for visualizing.
• Choosing the “Home” button at the top and bottom of each chapter page not only takes you to the index, but also to the correct position on the page. I.e. if you’re reading about “Exceptions and IO Streams” and decide to go back and check out next chapter, you won’t end up at the top of the index page. Great user experience.

I especially like the clickable diagrams; I absolutely did not expect a site like this to include that kind of “features”.

Quiz, Reviews, and Exercises

The site also offers quiz, reviews and exercises as ways for the visitor to test his or her skills in the subject. There’s something with how these parts of the web site are built. Try out a few Reviews and note how the interaction works. It’s a cool concept (good use of Javascript). Stripped to the barebones.

Style of writing

Writing for the web is difficult. You shouldn’t write novels for your visitors, nor write texts with small or no substance. It’s an art form actually: to be able to analyse the context, mood, target group(s), aim, and other scenarios.

I believe our case study outperforms other tutorials or educational sites in writing. There are no long paragraphs of theoretical explanations. I always hate tech articles that have these Wall of Text style paragraphs where just a couple of sentences are truly relevant. That’s not the case here, since all chapters are divided into pages, which each treats a single topic.

Do one thing, and do it well.

Even though I think this technique leads to many mouse clicks on the “Next” button on each page, it helps you focus on a single topic.

The writing is concise and pedagogical. It explains the concepts in images and real world concepts (that actually works). Some stuff that could be tricky for a beginner to wrap his or her head around (as recursion, for instance) are described with sketches, diagrams, and imagery.

Noticed how the author’s personality shines through in the text? There are jokes, analogies, and other things which makes it fun to read. It’s not a dull, grey Java tutorial – it’s a guy tutoring you how to use a tool in the best way possible.

Conclusion

What is my goal with this article? To give an example that surface is not sufficient to make a web site extraordinary. Go watch “Shrek” and it’ll tell you it’s what’s underneath that really counts.

Is our Case Study another sparse, un-designed educational site, or is it a minimalistic, functional, beautifully architectured learning tool?

Mark Boulton and many other industry profiles keep repeating this: design content out, not canvas in.

Note that this site wouldn’t demand that much work writing media queries for mobile devices, making it responsive, either.

Perhaps web designers and developers should look beyond what’s currently trendy and focus on the message – the content – the cause – the reason. It works for a decade-old computer science course, right?

Design without context is not design. It’s noise.

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I really liked it and was impressed. It was an elegant gallery of garden photos on portrait piece of paper, with the logotype in the middle. I think it was 3×6 small photos ordered in a grid. To be honest, I couldn’t have made it better myself.

I believe the moral of the story is that everybody can design. It just has to be simple enough. If I was to design that flyer, I had started to decide on typography, grids, hierarchy, colour scheme, what kind of photos to use, etc. I had given it too much thought and bypassed the really simple, straight-forward and plain beautiful solution. It’s important to take a step back as a designer (and developer as well) and think of what you’re doing. Is it really crucial and vital that the text lines up perfectly to the horizontal grid? Is it worth it to rewrite a large part of the application just to make use of that cool library? “Regular” people (if I may say so) aren’t always dumb users who have no idea of what they want. When I was young and foolish I used to be so very eager to build stuff that I didn’t care too much about asking people (and myself) what really mattered the most with this application/design. I ended up feeling like I had missed something. Of course there are boundaries where you actually shouldn’t consult end-users, focus groups and so on. But what I mean is that it’s quite good to step away from the designer/developer role and get back to the roots sometimes. Everybody will gain from it.

The renowned Swedish agency Forsman & Bodenfors has created a pretty but unusual cook book for IKEA.

90% of all the photographs taken in baking books look extremly alike. We wanted to try something different and present the recipes in a totally new fashion.

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So of course there’s a quick, hacky and dirty solution to the problem, which uses nothing but native OS X/iOS technologies and the amazing Dropbox as always (as well as a free web service). Check out the link above for the complete guide.

In short: connect your Dropbox to the free Send to Dropbox service which lets you e-mail stuff to your Dropbox account (in this case the web page URL as a text file), and set up a Automator folder action which runs a Ruby script that opens the text file and put the URL in your browser window.

ARGV.each do |f|
   file = File.new(f, "r")

   while (line = file.gets)
      system "open #{line}"
   end

   file.close
end

It’s minimal, hacky and lovely. I’ll never stop being amazed over the power of Dropbox and Automator.

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Twitter clients come and go, but this one had me at “Helvetica”. Trickle is a client which doesn’t have all features you’re used to. Tweets from your timeline is “trickling” in white Helvetica on the dark screen from the right while the device quietly sits on your desk (preferably in a dock). It does three things: shows tweets, retweets and favorites. Very simple. No profiles, links, replies, DMs, etc. Just plain and raw tweets.

I think it’s quite perfect. To have your Twitter stream on the side makes it subtle and non-disturbing. I don’t like tabbing to a designated Twitter client/Twitter.com to check stuff. Now I can just throw a glance at the iPhone. It’s universal and therefore works with the iPad, and I can only imagine how nice Trickle would look on a larger iPad display on your desk.

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The idea of using a “lesser” machine where I have constraints is quite thrilling, to be honest. It’s a minimalist computer where I maybe can’t runt all these fancy, heavy, Snow Leopard-y applications – instead I have to use simpler software and make the most of it. I know David Heinemeier Hansson said something similar, but I think that I work better with constraints.

That’s the reason I’m currently looking for an original iPod (preferably the one with touch wheel). Wouldn’t it be nice to play plain, simple music without having a big-ass multitouch screen, cameras, Twitter apps and stuff on it? Give me a shout if you see one!

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I have always been attracted to simple, robust and portable things I can bring on the trip and use anywhere. My Macbook is one of those things, so is my Victorinox knife, Hagor bag, and Certina wrist watch. There is something with these kind of objects – you get quite attached to them in a special way. Is it because of their history or function, or is it because of the simple philosophy behind their design?

I received a moka pot from my uncle for Christmas two years ago. On the card it said: “Sometime you’ve got to learn” (to drink coffee, that is). I wasn’t into coffee back then, but during my year in Canada I worked at Starbucks. Funny, huh? Now I’m really a coffee enthusiast and started using my moka pot for real. I can’t love it more than I do.

With only three essential parts, the moka pot is very easy to clean and maintain. Image from Wikipedia.

Design

First, it’s the construction of the pot. Its almost-symmetric hour glass design with iconic octagonal shapes is a joy to study, and even nicer to use. When it’s finished brewing and you’re pouring the coffee, a thin, elegant stream of pitch black wonder is coming out of the pipe. By pitch black, I mean pitch black, as coffee should be. The figure to the left describes the different parts of a moka pot. Essentially, we’ve got the water chamber (A), the coffee filter (B), and the coffee chamber (C). Three is a magic number.

If you watch the figure you really notice the pot’s symetrical beauty – even on the inside. On the bottom of the coffee chamber (C) there’s another filter with a rubber seal around it, so no steam can get in the chamber but through the grinded coffee. On one of the water chamber’s walls there’s a safety valve, which should not be blocked. Because we’re dealing with pressure and steam here, we need a safety valve to release some steam if the pressure would be too much inside the water chamber.

One other thing that really appeals to me is the material. Mine is made in aluminium with an ABS plastic handle. It’s elegant without being to shiny and uber-modern. To me it speaks sturdiness and “trust me”-ness (very much alike Apple’s line of Macbooks).

How it works

The principal behind the moka brewing process is quite similar in theory to the espresso machine. It’s not like drip coffee or the french press, where the coffee is sort of steeping in water – moka pots and espresso machines are working with steam, baby. When the water in the lower chamber is heated, it’ll eventually start boiling. Steam is produced. After a while there will be a lot of steam in the chamber, and it’ll push the remaining water down. The water is forced to go somewhere – up through the filter pipe, through the coffee and out through the small chimney in the coffee chamber.

It’s sort of a simplified espresso machine, but doesn’t deal with as high water pressure though. Thanks to the quick process and pressure involved, more caffeine and flavour is extracted out of the coffee grounds than with regular drip coffee.

Philosophy

The moka pot is simply constructed, cheap, easy to use and bring with you – everything an espresso machine isn’t. I’m so fascinated by the simplistic design and I love my moka because of the robust construction – it’s just raw metal with very few small, movable parts. Compare it to an old Volvo car, or a kalashnikov rifle: both works almost anywhere and has a very rough construction, a very straight-forward design which is easy to maintain. After usage, just screw it apart and rinse the parts in warm water, then let dry. The only thing you need with this moka pot (and other coffee making pots as well) is water, grinded coffee and a heat source.

How to make it

It’s dead simple to make moka coffee. Start with using great dark roast, espresso grinded coffee. You can buy it anywhere, even your local grocery store. However, to get the best quality, consider a visit to a coffee or speciality shop.

1. Put the coffee in the filter (B). Be quite generous, but do not tamp it! Just shake the filter a bit so the coffee is evenly distributed. I can highly recommend mixing some crushed cardamom seeds in it. Just a couple is needed. It’ll produce a little more tasting coffee, and with some cinnamon on the top you’re in nirvana.
2. Fill the water chamber (A) with cold water up to the security valve
3. Put the filter on top of the water chamber (make sure the coffee grounds are where they should be – inside the filter) and screw the coffee chamber (C) on top. You don’t want any steam to leak, so make sure the coffee chamber is really tight.
4. Put the moka pot on the stove. It usually takes around 4 minutes for the water to start boiling and produce steam. When you’re starting to hear the water boiling it’s time to pay a bit of attention. If you lift the top lid you’ll see when the coffee is coming up (like a volcano, it’s actually quite cool). With my moka pot it usually takes around 30 seconds for the coffee to fill the top chamber, but I remove the pot from the heat source before that happens. That’s because you don’t want your coffee diluted with regular water or steam which will start to come out of the chimney in the end of the process.
5. All done! Enjoy the coffee in small espresso sized cups, in larger cappuccino cups with some milk (to really bring out the underlying flavours), or together with steamed milk – latte or cappuccino style.

The moka pot is often called “poor man’s espresso”, because it’s way more affordable than a real espresso machine. However, the coffee you get out of a moka is very similar in strength and taste to “real” espresso coffee. Almost every home in Italy got a moka pot. An unfair statement would be that espresso machines are in higher regard becasuse of the skill involved in the process of pulling the perfect shot of espresso – that these machines only are intended for an elite. Personally, I actually prefer my moka pot before my father’s espresso machine. Even though I’ve worked in a coffee shop I find the machine quite tedious to work with, and if you don’t pay attention, you might get really bad tasting espresso (which ruins the whole drink).

Outro

The ultimate thing would be to make the whole process “by hand”. Getting whole espresso beans and grinding them yourself, heat the water on a wood stove and then steam fresh cow or goat milk. That’s handmade stuff you don’t see too much of nowadays, in our fast-paced society. We tend to forget the quality and freshness of our food. Everything should be able to do anything. The moka pot does one thing, and it does it well: making great coffee.

The thing is, the messaging area uses Webkit and therefore CSS to style the messages. You can change style by going to the Skype preferences > Messaging > Style. Custom styles live in ~/Library/Application Support/Skype/ChatStyles, and are in the .SkypeChatStyle format (basically a package consisting of CSS, HTML and JS files).

To the point of this post: Andy Graulund has created a minimal style for Skype 5 beta, Panamerica Mini. Download and put in the folder I mentioned above, and chose the style from the Preferences.

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Apparently there is an undocumented autocomplete feature in Apple’s TextEdit. Type some letters and hit the Escape key, and a list of suggestions will pop up. Pretty cool.

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