161–170 of 264 posts
Rabbit Test by Samantha Mills [0] is the heavily researched, hard sci-fi that retains its close intimacy on the impact on regular people that I think science fiction should be going towards. It's realistic, heavy-hitting, and doesn't bullshit on the politics involved. https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/rabbit-test/
Easily The City & The City by China Miéville. The premise is great, the characters are fun, the plot will keep you engaged. A noir detective story about a murder that happens in the space between two cities which are in superposition. That is, they share the same geographic space, but citizens are forced to live in only one of the cities by a seemingly omnipotent power called Breach that maintains the borders of the…
Besides The City & The City I really enjoyed Kraken and Un Lun Dun by China Miéville. Kraken is the hunt for a giant squid after it vanished from a London museum. Un Lun Dun is a young adult story of two friends who end up in a whimsical version of London.
He has a very opinionated style, so if it doesn't work for, you'll hate it. At the same time, I've found it extremely insightful about human nature and it forced my to face some parts of myself that I wasn't aware of and didn't like.
Very much love-or-hate read, but worth trying. Just maybe check out his old blog first to see if his style is bearable for you.
The Rustonomicon (WIP) made Rust things click in a way that really benefitted me: https://doc.rust-lang.org/nomicon/ Definitely in the running! I'd also recommend "The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work": https://web.cs.ucdavis.edu/~rogaway/papers/moral-en.pdf
Yeah 2022 was the year in which rust transitioned (to me) from "frustrating waste of time language" to "wait a minute, the standard library is really good, the tools are really good, I could probably make useful software with this". Though curious why a book describing unsafe rust made rust click for you?
I liken it to paint a tree, full of leaves which obscure its branches. I might never paint the branches, but understanding how the branches are shaped will help me draw a better tree.
This was in tandem with reading the Rust book, being active in the IRC, and writing programs to learn! The Rustonomicon just happened to have what I needed.
I realize this isn't really the intent of the question, but I read "The Count of Monte Cristo" this year for the first time and it's now my favorite book. It's a classic that I just had never bothered with and the story sucked me in. The redemption, revenge, scheming, secrecy. It was phenomenal.
The best works of fiction I read: - Count Belisarius by Robert Graves - The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell - The Expanse (all of them) - Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir And the best books on software development were: - Fundamentals of Software Architecture: An Engineering Approach by Mark Richards and Neal Ford - Multithreaded JavaScript by Thomas Hunter II and Bryan English - The Programmer's Brain by Felienne Herman…
I read "Crucial Conversations" this year. It feel like it has the potential to be life changing. Need more time to tell what impact it really has. It introduced me to a new topic, which is analyzing social situations and apply problem solving skills to them. Something that never occurred to me for some reason. I now realize there are smart people working and having interesting thoughts and conclusions in this topic.…