Fw: Top Java Developers Offer Advice to Students

Contents

Joshua Bloch: Write Lots of Code
Tor Norbye: Learn to Use Your Tools
Chet Haase: Don't Put Your Entire Application in One Method
Ben Galbraith: Interact With an Expert
Masood Mortazavi: Start Simple and Keep Learning
Raghavan Srinivas: Don't Be Overwhelmed
Cay Horstmann: First, Don't Panic
Arun Gupta: Try Different IDEs
Rick Cattell: Good Technology Is Only 10% of Success
Chuk-Munn Lee: Choose an Area of Your Immediate Need
Tom Ball: Programming Is Still a Craft

> Link to the article here.

This piece is really valuable to me. I hope it is valuable to you too, and that's why I want to share it.

7 Principles for Transforming Difficult Tasks into Simple Ones

Although this book is already 20 years old, surprisingly the design advices and observations still hold true for software UI today. I have not finished reading the book, but these seven principles are so useful that I owe it to myself if I don't post it somewhere.

Have you read any good books on software UI?

Quote from The Design of Everyday Things , page 188-189

1. Use both knowledge in the world and knowledge in the head.
2. Simplify the structure of tasks
3. Make things visible: bridge the gulfs of Execution and Evaluation
4. Get the mappings right
5. Exploit the power of constraints, both natural and artificial
6. Design for error
7. When all else fails, standardize

If you don't want to buy the book, look it up from your local library! I am pretty sure they have it!