Surrealism is a genre that invites us to put aside our store of familiar associations, to forget the logic of cause and effect we have become comfortable with by daily repetition. It presents a world arranged according to a different set of rules, woven from different threads than those which hold our familiar world together. […]
Useful Abstractions
“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.” So goes the quote attributed to Einstein. This is excellent advice for programmers, but the last part should be especially noted. How do you know when you’ve reached that point at which things can’t be made simpler? And once you know, or think you […]
How I Learn
I learned to code late. It was not until around the time I graduated with my bachelor’s degree that my interest in programming began, and I started that journey with everything to learn. Now that I’ve been programming professionally for over a decade, there is still no shortage of new things to learn, working in […]
Reading, Writing & Coding
Computer programs and books share the property of having a dual nature. A book is both something tangible and intangible: a physical object that has to be packed up in a box when you move, and at the same time a story, a biography, a point of view. You can’t judge a book by its […]
Why Lisp is More Than Lists
There is no shortage of Lisp rants on the internet, sometimes entertaining, sometimes educational and sometimes both. In this post I’d like to dip my toes into those waters and offer my own mini-rant, centered on one particular idea about Lisp that is often repeated, usually in introductions to the language, which strikes me as […]
LOL
Book Review: I Am Error
I have heard that the Futhark runic alphabet uses only vertical and diagonal lines to delineate its letters because it was usually engraved in wood, where the horizontal grain would make it difficult to distinguish a stroke from its wooden background. The quirks and limitations inherent in a medium leave their mark on the products […]