I’ve been kind of busy lately. I’ve discovered and started playing with Clojure, a Lisp implementation for Java. The best guide I’ve found so far is Clojure – Functional Programming for the JVM. I’ve made three small programs (really two), which you can learn about on my Clojure page.
The other thing I’ve been doing is catching up on some of the reading I’ve been meaning to do. I’ve gone through most of my backlog of magazines, and I’m working through my book list as well.
First I read a book I received for Christmas, The Best of 2600: A Hacker Odyssey. It’s 25 years of articles from 2600. There is so much in this book, from history of lawsuits, how the phone network used to work, and how inept many companies can be about security. It was a great read.
Next I read a book I’ve been meaning to read for over a year. Forbes magazine kept mentioning The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression by Amity Shlaes and I hadn’t known much about the Great Depression in depth. The book is a very well written history of The Great Depression, starting a few years early. Each chapter covers one year of history, going through pivotal events. The book is basically focused on President Roosevelt’s actions and decisions, and the stories of the men under him advising and running many of the programs. The book first covers how things start with President Coolidge and President Hoover’s actions in response, but Roosevelt gets quite a bit more time (since he presided over much more of the depression). It was very engrossing, especially so considering how much I’m avoiding current financial news because I’m so tired of hearing it. There are so many parallels in the book to other current and past events in the world of business and government it was very fascinating.
Now I’ve just started a book I’ve been meaning to read called On the Edge: the Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore. That’s a period of computer history I wasn’t a part of, and I’m very interested in learning more. The book talks about revisionist history (how most discussions of computer history focus on IBM, Apple, and Microsoft, the companies that were later the winners) so this part of the story is something I’m not very familiar with. I’m mostly enjoying it, but the quotes from Chuck Peddle often contain unnecessary profanity, which is something I honestly wasn’t expecting. I find that a little distracting. I’m only two chapters or so into the book at the moment.
