Great things and people that I discovered, learned, read, met, etc.
in 2016. No particular ordering is implied. Not everything is new.
also: see the lists from 2015,
2014,
2013,
2012,
2011
and 2010
Great blog posts read
- AlphaGo
under a magnifying glass - In a year filled to the brim
with garbage news and events, one very bright spot for me was the Lee
Sedol vs. AlphaGo match. There were many articles about the theory
and implementation of AlphaGo, but the “under a magnifying glass” series
was my favorite.
- Literate
DevOps - Over the years I’ve vacillated between love and
not-love for Literate
Programming, but its use in DevOps seems very compelling.
- Developer hiring and
the market for lemons - Dan Luu’s site is my favorite
technical writing on the web at the end of 2016. I doubt that standing
will change any time soon. The whole site is amazing, but his writing
are especially thoughtful and nuanced.
- Tiny Lisp
computer - plus (part 2 – In the lead as
my hardware project for 2017.
- The
secret lives of Tumblr teens - Being a teen has always
sucked, but it’s especially hard in a world of ubiquitous computing,
social media, and superficial connections.
- A
glimpse into the Apollo guidance computer - A very nice
overview of this historic code and
information about it.
- Alan
Kay’s comments on HN - Yes. Alan Kay occasionally posts on
Hacker News.
- The
glorious horror of TECO - Any program as influential as
TECO and described as a “glorious horror” is worth at least checking out
for a hot-second.
- Jack
Kerouac’s home-brew tabletop baseball game - Kerouac spent
a large portion of his life developing a baseball simulation that he
would play in his spare time and write fake sports news about.
- Is
the competitive Bridge world rife with cheaters? - Spoiler:
probably.
- Frameless
geodesic dome - WJW.
- The David
W. Niven collection of early Jazz legends - A list that
should take me 10 years to work my way through.
- Deep
Learning in Clojure With Cortex - My co-worker Carin Meier
knocks another out of the park - this time trying to distinguish cats
from dogs!
- Contempt
culture - People in general are haters. However, when
paychecks are involved then all sense of decorum in online discussions
revolving around tech fly right out the window. Tech is not a
meritocracy but instead a culture of contempt whereby “merit” is defined
in terms of arbitrary, inconsistent, and fleeting Venn
diagrams.
Most viewed blog posts by me
I’ve been scaling back on blogging the past two years and have tried
something different instead - Read-Eval-Print-λove. That
said, there were a couple of high-traffic posts on my blog.
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 2016 that are
stellar.
Favorite non-technical books
read
Number of books read
a
bunch
Number of books published
0
Number of books written
0.01 (an outline)
Favorite musicians
discovered
Interesting games discovered
- King
Chocolate - Ugly as heck, but a fun abstract game about
production line management and shared incentives.
- [Patchwork