The Pattern On The Stone

In my class we have just finished reading "The Pattern on the Stone" by W. Daniels Hillis and it was a pretty interesting read. I happen to be one of those people who dislike reading when it's for a class but this book was pretty thought provoking at some points. Hillis describes a lot of what he is talking about in an easy to read way for people who are just getting into computers, or don't know much about them at all. Such as in chapter 5 "Algorithms and Heuristics", he describes algorithms using socks. His roommate devised an algorithm for organizing his socks in a much faster way than he was doing it before. He would take two socks and if they didn't match he would throw them back; Instead now he found a sock and put it in a line. Once he found two matching socks in a line, he would take them out of the line and fold them.(78) I actually really enjoyed this chapter because it was fairly easy to read and it gave the examples in a way I could quickly understand.

 Being still somewhat new to computers and the terminology, the book in its entirety was much easier to read than some other course textbooks I've looked at. There was not much I didn't like about this book, again it was hard to pick up because it was required reading, but it was more enjoyable than other course books. A nice thing about this book is that whenever Hillis talked about a term or concept that was new, he very nicely explained it. I didn't have to look anything up on google to understand what he was saying. Honestly this book did help me understand computers a bit better, at least some terminology. Before reading this book I did not know much about algorithms, heuristics, or Turing Machines. I just had a small understanding of them. Such as a Turing Machine is described in his words as a "mathematician performing calculations on a scroll of paper" with an infinitely long scroll. The Turing Machine shows that although this mathematician can do all of these long problems with ease, a "stupid" but meticulous clerk could do all of the same mathematics by following a simple set of rules for reading and writing the problems on the scroll. The Turing Machine is that clerk.(63)

I do recommend this book to any new Computer Science or Computer Engineer students who need a simple way of explaining these concepts. With the real life metaphors that are easy to imagine, such as socks for algorithms or a mathematician, it is not a hard read. A lot of computer textbooks are very dry and are a pain to get through and read. This one is not written like a textbook but more of a guide to these ideas of computers. Hillis told the story of how he made a computer out of tinker toys with a few friends of his. The tinker toy computer worked like a switch and light computer but with string and sticks. The computer was "programmed" to play tic-tac-toe and it never lost.(17)
Stories like this make for a much more interesting read than being fed definitions and terms like a normal textbook.
I think this book was chosen as a textbook because of the simple and fun way programming and computers are described. I think even to someone interested in the subject but brand new to it would be able to understand the concepts. It is also pretty short and cheap unlike most college textbooks(with only 9 chapters in the whole book). For an intro class into computers this is a great book to read to get the basics.