Book Review: Tog on Software Design

I just finished reading Tog on Software Design, a very interesting book overall, although I found some parts a little more interesting than others.

Much of the focus of the book is on Bruce Tognazzi's Starfire project, a project started in 1992 to provide a vision of the future for software in the year 2004. The transcripts of the resulting video from the project were a little tedious to get through...I should have just watched the video. It was interesting to see how much of the technology featured in the video still isn't available four years after the story takes place.

The rest of the book focused on design principles intended to provide a better user experience when creating software. Many of the principles he presented were simple matter of fact statements that seemed obvious. But turning his principles into implementations are probably easier said than done.

The part of the book I found most interesting was his side-by-side comparison of software and magic. It is an interesting metaphor that doesn't seem very obvious, but makes a lot of sense after his explanation. To summarize:

Both software designers and magicians create virtual realities. We bring ours alive on computer displays; magicians bring theirs alive on the stage. We capture our "performances" in code so they can continue to occur long after their writing; magicians traditionally appear live. We depend on our knowledge of the mechanics of computer technology, the aesthetics of graphic design, and the science of psychology. Magicians depend on their knowledge of the mechanics of their tricks, the aesthetics of showmanship, and the science of psychology.

It's interesting to envision the goal of software design as providing a user with an illusion that makes the physical computer disappear and replaces it with a real world metaphor that allows them to get work done.