Week 1: Press
The opening lecture — why one button is a design position worth twelve weeks, not a restriction to route around
Most software assumes at least two inputs exist: one to confirm, one to cancel or back out. This course removes that assumption entirely, and the removal is the point, not an obstacle to design around. A doorbell, an elevator call button, and a Morse key already run on the same idea — one input, read for whatever it can give before anything else gets added. This semester spends twelve weeks finding out how much that “whatever it can give” actually is.
Before anything gets read at all, one distinction is worth being precise about: a press is an event — something that happens — not a value — something that has a state. Treating “pressed” as if it lingers after the event is the easiest mistake to make early on, and every later primitive this semester is built by adding structure on top of the plain event, not by replacing it.
Outline#
- why this course treats one button as a design position, not a limitation to engineer around
- the event/value distinction, and why blurring it undermines everything built on top of it later
- what a whole semester can be built from a single edge-triggered signal, once you stop assuming you need more
Teaching team
- Marisol Quaye — convenor