Great things and people that I discovered, learned, read, met, etc.
in 2020. No particular ordering is implied. Not everything is new.
also: see the lists from 2019,
2018,
2017,
2016,
2015,
2014,
2013,
2012,
2011
and 2010
Great blog-posts / articles
read
- The
Octopus: An Alien Among Us - for biology-curious goofs such as myself, the octopus is a
fascinating example of aliens among us. no chimera was half as
interesting.
- A
Conversation with Arthur Whitney - computing luminary and
designer of the A+, k, and q
languages as well as an early
contributor to J speaks about his life and contributions to
computing and also that he never writes buggy code.
- The
True Glamour of Clarice Lispector - a portrait of a
brilliant author who’s characters lived and experienced life as the
author experienced it. her body of work is a record of her
life.
- Mark I
FORTH Computer - a home-brewed forth computer using
discrete components.
- Art
Bell and the Eerie Joy of Late Night Radio - as a college
student i would often spend my nights slinging code, working proofs, and
writing essays long into the night. my background sounds of choice were
the dulcet tones of Art Bell, the original host of Coast to Coast AM and
lover of all things weird. while most of the content of his shows were
far-fetched at best, i couldn’t help but marvel at the possibilities of
a world that was much more interesting than the one in which i
lived.
- How is
the Linux Kernel Tested? - from linus’ gut to static
analysis to automated testing to continuous integration to people
running commands.
- The Rise
and Fall of Commercial Smalltalk - Allen Wirfs-Brock
responds to Gilad Bracha’s perspective on the subject, providing his own
perspective in the process. interestingly what Smalltalk brought to
computing was probably more important than Smalltalk itself.
- A
Constructive Look at TempleOS - TempleOS is a legend in the
weird world of hobby osdev and its developer Terry Davis
(RIP) was as prolific as he was controversial (i.e. massively). the
operating system is an altar (in more ways than one) to eccentricity and
was developed with a singular focus on speed and direct hardware
access.
- Cemetery of
Soviet Computers - a retrocomputing bonanza of defunct
Soviet computer systems found in a dilapidated building somewhere in
Russia.
- How
SHRDLU Got Its Name - Terry Winograd explains how his
blocks world program SHRDLU got its name.
- AI
Ruined Chess, Now It’s Making the Game Beautiful Again -
how AlphaZero is used to explore odd variants of Chess, finding new
patterns and in some cases reducing draws dramatically.
- Rewriting
the Technical Interview - a work of beautiful
madness.
- thought
leaders and chicken sexers by Zach Tellman - an essay that
takes on the topic of Paul Graham head on, especially in regard to his
programming language experiment Arc. computerists of a certain vintage
have a complex relationship with pg in that many of his early, mostly
pseudo-technical writings were inspirational. however, over time his
focus has changed to that of concerns of finance and thought-leadership
thus leaving many who admired his technicalish essays alienated. Zach
captures the spirit of that group well in both the content of the
article and its subtext.
- I Could Do That in a
Weekend - if you’ve spent any time at all on the internet
then you’ve likely heard the phrase “i could do that in a weekend” – the
battle cry of the dickweed. Dan Luu talks about the difference between
happy-paths and real work required to make modern software
systems.
Most viewed blog posts by me
I’ve been trying something new over the past couple of years. That
is, I’ve been posting threads and such on my Twitter with a small handful
of posts here That said, there were a few high-traffic posts on my
blog.
- ToriLisp
- an ersatz LISP for little birds - my final post of 2020
turned out to be my most popular. this one described a little
programming language that I created over the course of the year and the
motivations behind it.
- Six
Works of Computer Science Fiction - an older post that
discusses computer science books describing systems that couldn’t
possibly be real – except that they are!
- Walking
the Clojure Source History (a talk not given) - some images
of notebook pages with notes about the commit history of Clojure during
its early days. the notes were in service to a conference talk that i
never gave.
- 8-bit
Spirituals - a short discussion about old 8-bit programs
and the gestalt of the small, yet feature-rich, in programming and some
modern examples that fit this mold.
Favorite technical
books discovered (and read)
I’ve intentionally reduced the number of technical books that I
consume, but there are a few that I “found” in 2020 that stood out.
- UNIX:
A History and a Memoir by Brian Kernigan - this was much
better than i thought it would be. regardless of how you view UNIX the
anecdotes and stories are worth reading.
- *[Introduction to Very Large Scale Integration Systems