Ask HN: What are you reading/learning/working on over the holiday break?
This time of the year many people take time off to spend time with family and have extra free time to work on their own stuff (Python was famously created as a Christmas break project), so I’m curious how you’ll be using this extra time?
I’m planning to spend time some time making progress on all the writing that I need to finish…
I'm forcing myself to get back into blogging and coding regularly, doing at least something every day (https://zahlman.github.io/meta/2024/12/20/todo-finish-todo-l...). (There will probably be family here for Christmas; I'll probably just publish something I wrote ahead of time.)
>Python was famously created as a Christmas break project
I actually haven't heard this story before.
For me, establishing a sort of routine was the best way to get past the frustration of having multiple lingering unfinished projects/posts. I struggled more with determining when to ship a post rather than getting out what I wanted to say.
For a routine to be helpful, it doesn't have to be as frequent as weekly. I can imagine that turnaround being the source of a new set of anxieties!
I enjoy writing about books and articles I read. Even just putting together lists and some notes at the end of each year helped me organize my thinking tremendously. Here are my recommendations from 2023 [0, 1]; I'm currently cranking out the 2024 lists!
[0] https://bcmullins.github.io/interesting-books-2023/
[1] https://bcmullins.github.io/interesting-articles-2023/
>For a routine to be helpful, it doesn't have to be as frequent as weekly.
I agree, but my experience has been that daily habits are easier to form.
Consider it an early Christmas gift https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/10273872...
A friend and I are starting to work through Information Theory, Inference, and Learning Algorithms.
Are you guys getting a holiday break? I don't think I have that privilege
This is one of the first holidays where I don't feel an urge to program. Feels strange. Guess I'm getting older?
Reading: The Snows of Kilimanjaro
Project: Logic Gate Editor + Simulator (but I can't really bring myself to work on it much)
Frohe Weihnachten!
Just completed a LC-3 interpreter emulator and tried to wrap my head around dynamic recompilation into x64 code. Still couldn't figure out how to deal with indirect jump as it can potentially jump to every memory address so maybe I'll just map every target instruction to a block of translated code.
Got a 3d printer so want to do some tailor made functional prints.
Reading: Before the coffee gets cold book series
Learning: GoLang
Working on: Making HiCafe.co more stable and building an image generator
Happy holidays
Reading: Fuzzy Logic by Bart Kosko
Learning: Professional Scrum Master
Working on: my shitty consulting job
Happy holidays!
Reading: A Feast for Crows
Learning: NandToTetris
Working on: Kagi chrome extension
A song of Ice and Fire is a great book.
That third book was incredible, and I had watched the show!
Fingers crossed that it ever gets finished