Great things and people that I discovered, learned, read, met, etc. in 2013. No particular ordering is implied. Not everything is new.
also: see the lists from 2012, 2011 and 2010
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My favorite Erlang program – When Joe Armstrong blogs about his favorite Erlang program, you read it. There is no debate here.
Operating System Development Series – I am an absolute sucker when it comes to OSDev articles.
Internal Reprogrammability – Fowler does it again. And again. And again.
Exponential Decay of History, Improved – David Barbour improves on an idea that was already a very good idea to start. The original are solid reads. 1
Wodehouse Saved My Life – Hugh Laurie discusses Wodehouse.
On Software Architecture – Software architecture (and architects) are at times much maligned. The view of the architect is becoming less vitriolic as the Internet forces a focus on architecture, but many poseurs have worked to taint the view of, in my opinion, a crucial role in modern software shops. Roy Fielding posted a while back about architecture in a way that really crystalized my understanding of the value. 2
Carver Mead: The Spectator Interview – This is an article that takes a few re-reads to really hit home.
Dear Leader Dreams of Sushi – an astonishing article about Kim Jong-il’s obsessiong with sushi and the man who helped sate it
JavaScript Isn’t Scheme – I’d read Nystrom blog on just about any topic, but this one is his best of 2013 IMO
The Genre Artist – an article about Jack Vance, a great, but under-appreciated scifi writer.
Ruins of Forgotten Empires – an article about the APL family of programming languages
Simon Stalenhag’s art – beautiful retro-futuristic paintings
Design Challenges: Haggis – Game designer Sean Ross details his design thinking behind his wonderful card game Haggis.
Dig Deep: Beyond Lean-in – Bell Hooks on modern feminism and the Lean-in principle
Andrew Looney’s Eleven Principles of Game Design – Quite possibly the game designer that I admire the most, on game design
Rediscovering Checkers – a gentleman describes “scientific checkers”
Chuck Moore’s Creations – One of my favorite talks at Strange Loop 2013 conference was Moore’s talk entitled *Programming a 144-computer Chip to Minimize Power. In that talk he describes the gritty details of effectively bootstrapping a GreenArray parallel processing board using a version of colorForth. The language and the board shown by Moore were a revelation to me. I started my career working in the guts of machines using an oscilloscope as my debugging environment and Moore’s creations made me yearn for that experience once again.3
10 Technical Papers Every Programmer Should Read (At Least Twice) – My most popular post of 2011 was also my most popular of 2012 and also of 2013 – go figure.
FP vs. OO, from the trenches – Really just an anecdote about where I’ve found functional programming useful over object-orientation and vice versa. For some reason it was popular for a few days – or at least controversial.
Fun.js – My announcement of my book “Functional JavaScript” made the Internet rounds. Plus the whole Fun.js series as a whole garnered a crap-ton of views and some discussion.
C.S. on the Cheap – My idea for a Dover-like publication run of computer science books.
Scala: Sharp and Gets Things Cut – Kind of a rant about the way that Scala is marketed that came off more critical than I wanted.
Enfield: a programming language designed for pedagogy – A description of a the perfect programming language for exploration.
Computerists – A bit of cynicism on my part about computer “science.”
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10 by Nick Montfort and others – A critical, philosophical and artistic view of a simple line of Commodore 64 BASIC code.
Computer Lib; Dream Machines by Ted Nelson – It took me ~15 years to track down a reasonably priced copy of this book, but the wait was well worth it.
The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal by Waldrop – Licklider is little known amongst modern computerists, but much of what we know about computation owes much to his mind and guidance.
As someone with a background in simulation I’ve felt that David’s idea has a real place in sim. However, I’ve not been able to put them to the test yet.↩︎
While Fielding’s post helped, working closely with unbelievable architects like Tim Ewald, Russ Olsen and Michael Nygard truly imprinted the desire to incorporate architectural thinking into my own software processes.↩︎
As a kid I vaguely remember a movie about some kid who had a computer that ran on a 9-volt battery who could write code that generated these materialized force-bubbles. He used these force bubbles for all kinds of fun activities but mostly to fly to space and visit aliens. I believe that computer ran a GreenArray and was programmed via colorForth. Does anyone remember this film? My memory and Google-fu fails me.↩︎