I have written some books to help people to learn computer programming.
Although the books are not very recently published books,
they are still valid books for studying the basics of computer programming.
The book in which C# is used as the programming language is probably the most
beautiful book about computer programming.
Laitinen, K., Taramaa, J., Heikkilä, M., and Rowe, N. C.. Enhancing
Maintainability of Source Programs through Disabbreviation. The Journal
of Systems and Software, Vol. 37, No. 2, 1997, pp. 117 - 128.
Laitinen, K. Estimating Understandability of Software Documents. ACM
SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes, Vol. 21, No. 4, 1996, pp. 81 - 92.
Laitinen, K. Natural Naming in Software Development and Maintenance.
VTT Publications no. 243. Technical Research Centre of Finland, Espoo,
1995, 170 pages. (Published Doctoral Thesis)
Laitinen, K. Natural Naming in Software Development: Feedback from Practitioners.
In: Proceedings of 7th International Conference on Advanced Information
Systems Engineering (CAiSE*95). Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol.
932. Springer Verlag, Berlin, 1995, pp. 375-388.
Rowe, N.C. and Laitinen, K. Semiautomatic Disabbreviation of Technical
Text. Information Processing & Management, Vol. 31, No. 6, 1995, pp.
851-857.
Laitinen, K. and Taramaa, J. A Theory to Support the Use of Natural
Naming in Software Documentation. Working papers series B33, Department
of Information Processing Science, University of Oulu, Finland, 1994, 27
pages.
Laitinen, K. Pacific: A Programming Language Based on the Idea of Natural
Naming. In: Baeza-Yates, R. (editor) Computer Science 2: Research and Applications,
Plenum Press, New York, 1994, 529-540. (This paper was first presented
in a conference in Chile in October 1993.)
Laitinen, K. The Principle of Natural Naming in Software Documentation.
VTT Research Notes no. 1498. Technical Research Centre of Finland, Espoo,
1993, 90 pages. (Also published as a thesis for the degree of the Licentiate
of Philosophy at the Department of Information Processing Science of the
University of Oulu, Finland.)
Laitinen, K. Using Natural Naming in Programming: Feedback from Practitioners.
In: Detienne, F. (editor) Proceedings of the 5th Workshop of the Psychology
of Programming Interest Group, INRIA Roquencourt, P.B.105, 78153 Le Chesnay
Cedex, France, December 1992, pp. 108-119.
Laitinen, K. 1992. Document Classification for Software Quality Systems.
ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes, Vol 17, No 4, Oct. 1992, pp. 32-39.
Laitinen, K. and Mukari, T. DNN-Disciplined Natural Naming, A Method
for Systematic Name Creation in Software Development. In: Proceedings of
25th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Vol. II: Software
Technology, IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, California, 1992,
pp. 91-100.
Laitinen, K. and Seppänen, V. Principles for Naming Program Elements,
A Practical Approach to Raise Informativity of Programming. In: Part I
of Proceedings of InfoJapan'90 International Conference, Information Processing
Society of Japan, 1990, pp. 79-86.
Laitinen, Kari. Suoria rahalaitosyhteyksiä tukevan osajärjestelmän
suunnittelu kassalaitteeseen. [A Subsystem for Supporting On-line Bank
Communications in a Cash Terminal System.] A thesis for the Master of Science
degree at the Department of Electrical Engineering in the University of
Oulu, Finland. 1986, 64 pages. In Finnish.
Most of my papers are published and presented in conferences. The first conference
where I presented a paper was called InfoJapan'90. It was quite exciting to speak to
something like 200 people who were all dressed in suits.
In the InfoJapan'90 conference in Tokyo there was also a presentation by Steve Jobs.
Steve introduced the latest model of his NeXT computer. Only later, after having
studied the history of computing, I have been able to appreciate the fact that I
have once been listening a talk of this remarkable man. Steve was using a suit
in the conference.
I was born in a place called Vaala in the Finnish
countryside, 100 kilometers to the east of Oulu. My birth took place a
couple of years before the Beatles published their first record.
I do not remember the days of Beatlemania, but I remember that older
people spoke, years later, about Beatles and the 'madness' that they
caused among their listeners.
I lived the first
18 years of my life in a wooden house in Vaala. Those parts of Finland are quite
rarely populated. When I entered school, I was the only student in the first
grade. There was this benefit that I could easily win the skiing competition
of the first grade. Later, though, the school was merged to another school
where there were more students. That meant the end for my skiing career.
