• It took me some time to realize why I keep coming back to this place. To the attendant, in her spectacles, and face-mask. To the small enclosure contained within those four walls with their white paint tearing up in some places. To the servers, with their plates, and to the food topped with Ghee. I was looking for a word, a feeling to explain this behavior. I know what it is now. Familiarity.. Ghee Sakhar, by Mihir Jain

  • Against a lifestyle of consumption: The logic of the best is so pernicious because it’s poised to monopolize — an emphasis on the consumption of material goods can easily translate into a life of generalized consumption. A whole language can start to develop around not just the consumption of goods, but the consumption of experience: “We did Prague.” “We did Barcelona.” -Moxie Marlinspike

  • The Dungeon Master Experience, by Chris Perkins: Intended as advice about creating great D&D campaigns, this taught me about good storytelling, with the prelude to each week’s column reading like a patchwork of stories about Chris’ byzantine campaign, “Iomandra and the Dragon Sea”. link. Excrept: The heroes convene aboard their ship, the Maelstrom, before embarking on their next epic quest. That’s when Melech, Bruce Cordell’s character, notices something strange in the night sky: three unfamiliar stars peering just above the southwestern horizon.

  • The Dragon In My Garage, by Carl Sagan: Now, what’s the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all?

  • “We see all around us that the marginal cost of goods and services eventually approaches zero, but one thing we all want and pay for is entertainment. And that’s the value of education. Ultimately, the more educated and creative you are, the easier it will be for you to entertain yourself and never be bored.” -Hal Abelson, paraphrased.

  • “I’m not even sure where preorder numbers come into play. The only application I know of for preorder numbers is to trick you on exams or homeworks” -Vigoda the Betrayer, former Professor, Computer Science Department, Georgia Tech. Link

  • “Ever notice how “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn” and “Protected abstract virtual typedef’d copy constructor function” sound identical underwater?” -Steve Yegge, Stevey’s Drunken Blog Rants

  • “I would snort VTI if it came as a powder.” -Hot-Praline7204, reddit.com/r/bogleheads

  • “A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.” ― Robert A. Heinlein

  • “The finest line of poetry ever uttered in the history of this whole damn country was said by Canada Bill Jones in 1853, in Baton Rouge, while he was being robbed blind in a crooked game of faro. George Devol, who was, like Canada Bill, not a man who was averse to fleecing the odd sucker, drew Bill aside and asked him if he couldn’t see that the game was crooked. And Canada Bill sighed, and shrugged his shoulders, and said, ‘I know. But it’s the only game in town.’ And he went back to the game.” –Neil Gaiman, American Gods.

  • A beautiful excrept from Terry Pratchett’s “Reaper Man”: Death’s dialouge is CAPITALIZED.

    “Picture a tall, dark figure, surrounded by cornfields…
    NO, YOU CAN’T RIDE A CAT. WHO EVER HEARD OF THE DEATH OF RATS RIDING A CAT? THE DEATH OF RATS WOULD RIDE SOME KIND OF DOG.
    Picture more fields, a great horizon-spanning network of fields, rolling in gentle waves…
    DON’T ASK ME I DON’T KNOW. SOME KIND OF TERRIER, MAYBE.
    …fields of corn, alive, whispering in the breeze…
    RIGHT, AND THE DEATH OF FLEAS CAN RIDE IT TOO. THAT WAY YOU KILL TWO BIRDS WITH ONE STONE.
    …awaiting the clockwork of the seasons.
    METAPHORICALLY.”

  • A veiled boast about C++: There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses. ― Bjarne Stroustrup

  • State Machines: A computer is a state machine. Threads are for people who can’t program state machines –Alan Cox. From lkml. I don’t know how he meant it, but I personally found state machines to be a very good way to design programs. Everytime I find an elegant design that uses state machines, I wonder why I don’t use those more often.

  • You can’t just place a LISP book on top of an x86 chip and hope that the hardware learns about lambda calculus by osmosis. –James Mickens, about the undeniable reality of pointers, in “The Night Watch”. The entire The Wisdom of James Mickens series is awesome. James is a man after my own heart.

  • Two Kinds of Gifts: From Graduate School, Keys to Success by Remzi Arpaci-Dusseau, originally from “The Art of Game Design” by Jesse Schelle

    Well, here is a little secret about gifts. There are two kinds. First, there is the innate gift of a given skill. This is the minor gift. If you have this gift, a skill such as game design, mathematics, or playing the piano comes naturally to you. You can do it easily, almost without thinking. But you don’t neces- sarily enjoy doing it. There are millions of people with minor gifts of all kinds, who, though skilled, never do anything great with their gifted skill, and this is because they lack the major gift.

    The major gift is love of the work. This might seem backward. How can love of using a skill be more important than the skill itself? It is for this simple reason: If you have the major gift, the love of designing games, you will design games using whatever limited skills you have. And you will keep doing it. And your love for the work will shine through, infusing your work with an indescribable glow that only comes from the love of doing it.

  • On Computer Science: “Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes” –EWD. Also referenced in Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs

  • Computer Science is Mathematics: From Ask Me Anything with Simon Peyton Jones, hosted by Benjamin Pierce, PLDI 2020.

    For me, Computer Science is Mathematics made incarnate, right? Made flesh. Made tangible. If you think about a loop- a loop is induction in execution! How am I sure that the loop does give the right answer? You have to give an inductive proof. Computer Science is the way that we manifest or animate mathematics.

  • The Clockwise/Spiral Rule: From c-faq, originally by David Anderson. Helping people parse C declarations in interviews since 1994. Because of course, if I were working on a real project, I’d use the program from KnR to be sure. But it turns out, not having to consult documentation for language features does make you a better programmer..