The Cartoon Guide to.. Programming?

I recently found a link to a series of Larry Gonick's mathematical cartoons that were originally published in Discover magazine:


This is a companion discussion topic for the original blog entry at: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/04/the-cartoon-guide-to-programming.html

For even more sweet, hot Gonick action, check out his 14-comic “Candide in China” series:

a href="http://china.candidemedia.com/html/dispatches/cartoonarc1.html"http://china.candidemedia.com/html/dispatches/cartoonarc1.html/a

It’s about Chinese inventions that predated the western equivalents, sometimes by many hundred years (eg, the printing press).

Dare I say… First!

But seriously, I’ve always liked stuff like this. In fact, I read cartoon guide to genetics back when it came out and it really did impart a lot of decent information.

Also, and I apologize for the triple post, but is it my imagination or does the traveling salesman strip not actually explain or show a solution to the traveling salesman problem? The note in the last panel seems to say that it doesn’t solve what it should actually be solving.

Have you see the poignant guide to Ruby?
http://poignantguide.net/ruby/chapter-3.html

“Also, and I apologize for the triple post, but is it my imagination or does the traveling salesman strip not actually explain or show a solution to the traveling salesman problem? The note in the last panel seems to say that it doesn’t solve what it should actually be solving.”

There’s a second page to the cartoon :wink:

Never mind cartoons, I recently found programming concepts stick in your mind much better if you use a perverted analogy.

This one is popular:
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2006/3/14/175929/544

Ah yes, well how about that! Silly me.

Somewhat related:

I just want to point out that Mark Wheelis, the co-author with Larry Gonick for the Cartoon Guide to Genetics was my microbiology professor from UC Davis (Behind my mild mannered software developing exterior I’m actually a microbiologist).

Couldn’t agree more - programming was a black art to me until I discovered “Illustrating Basic”. Now…