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Life, Learning & Writing
The most popular blog posts about life, learning & writing on Hacker News. 225 posts.
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Locked doors, headaches, and intellectual need
You know those things that, once you learn about them for the first time, you start seeing them absolutely everywhere? Recently, that’s been my experience with problem-solution ordering issues. They keep cropping up: not just in the context of gam...
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Many McGill Education Students Cannot Calculate an Average
This is a story about McGill education students that cannot calculate an average, and the professor who admitted he didn't care. Fina...
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Just Wear Headphones
Matt Blodgett on topics occasionally germane to software development.
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The sky's gone dark
Back to: Brief hiatus | Forward to: Tanks! Why tank stories make great tech myths
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My Top 100 Programming, Computer and Science Books: Part One
I was recently interviewed by Fog Creek and one of the questions was about my favorite programming, coding and development books. I got very excited by this question as I'm a huge book nerd. I love books about computers, programming, and science. Every few months I spend a day or two researching the latest…
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The Socratic Method: Teaching by Asking Instead of by Telling
The following is a transcript of a teaching experiment, using the Socratic method, with a regular third grade class in a suburban elementary school. I present my perspective and views on the session, and on the Socratic method as a teaching tool, following the transcript. The class was conducted on a Friday afternoon…
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It Just Works
Marco Arment wrote about Apple losing the ‘functional high ground’ earlier this year, and it was met with tons of discussion - blog posts, podcasts, twitter battles and more. The…
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Some Practical Thoughts on Suicide
In this post, I’m going to talk about suicide, and why I’m still on this planet. These are stories I’ve kept secret from my family, girlfriends, and closest friends for years. Recently, however, I had an experience that shook me—woke me up—and I decided that it was time to share it all. So, despite the shame I […]
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“Considered Harmful” Essays Considered Harmful
It is not uncommon, in the context of academic debates over computer science and Web standards topics, to see the publication of one or more “considered harmful” essays. These essays have existed in some form for more than three decades now, and it has become obvious that their time has passed. Because “considered…
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Effective Learning Strategies for Programmers
In early September I gave a keynote at Kiwi PyCon in New Zealand on effective learning for programmers. There were two pieces to the talk: one about …
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Going “Write-Only”
Joey Hess inspires me. He lives in a cabin and programs Haskell on a drastically under-powered netbook. He harvests all his electricity from the sun with a homemade electrical system. Joey has designed his computing life to be highly distributed like the git version control he loves. His internet connection is…
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Why and How I Wrote My Academic Book in Plain Text
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My Apple Watch After 5 Days
Having known about the Apple Watch for some time and knowing lots of my friends were planning to buy one, I was sceptical as my needs are quite different to that of those of the sighted and hearing. I have to rely on specific accessible features. However, I was curious as Apple products have b...
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Join the Engineering Leisure Class
Engineers earn more money than we need, and the world is full of interesting problems that don’t promise a financial return. Why are the…
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Toast
Toast was my first published short story collection. It's now effectively out of print — there was going to be a limited, signed, "final" edition, but I haven't seen hide nor hair of it for a year or two now — so I'm releasing it under a Creative Commons license.
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Monkey the Cat Hunts for Dinner
Monkey the cat hunts for his dinner using an Arduino powered cat feeder.
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My Top 100 Programming, Computer and Science Books: Part Three
Hi everyone! Here's part three of my favorite programming, computer, and science books. If you're just joining, please see part one and part two for introduction. This time I'll be sharing my favorite books about Unix, logic programming, thermodynamics, and mathematical foundations of computer science. In one of the...