andrewjanke

I am typing this on an 2017 iMac Pro running Intel, which has been my main work and personal machine for the last 7 years. I do like 90% of my computing on it. Works fine, I kinda love it, and don't want to give it up any time soon.

The 27" 5K iMac form factor has become my favorite form factor, and I'm kind of unwilling to use anything else now.

The newer Apple silicon chips will spank this old Xeon in terms of performance and bang-for-buck. Buuuuut I just can't really bring myself to care and get excited about the newer machines.

It's running macOS 15.7.8 Sequoia, which is far as it will go, and I'm just fine with that. Newer Mac software releases won't support Intel at all. Haven't run in to any that I actually care about.

Virtualization is mediocre. Can't really run more that 2 VMs on it at the same time before it starts to bog down. And the VM experience on it is disappointing even if you're only running one, especially when it comes to UI responsiveness and graphics. But that's kind of a "power user" use case.

Homebrew will be dropping support for macOS 15 soon, if that's something you care about. That one actually will be a bummer.

Dan Luu is great. If he's up your alley, you may also like Steve Sinofsky ("Hardcore Software"), Raymond Chen ("The Old New Thing"), and if you're in to the business & finance side of things, Patrick McKenzie aka patio11 ("Bits About Money").

Big +1 to this. Much of the programming stuff I've read that's made a big difference to me and my skills and career has been the older "classic" and fundamental stuff. Unless it's directly related to the specific tools you're working with on your current project, and even specific issues with those tools, maybe let it age before you spend time on it.

"1+ year" actually sounds pretty short to me. Maybe 5 or 10 years to see if something has real insight and staying power and you want to spend your time on reading it. For stuff that's like, books or serious papers & essays, and not small news or release-notes or security-update posts. Many of the things I've read the last ~10 years that had lasting value were from the '90s or even '70s. (Though there's often updated editions of them, and AFAICT the new editions are pretty much always better.)

There's a "Somebody's Law" for this that basically goes "for a thing that's currently in use, the older it is, the longer it will probably stay relevant, and vice versa". Can't remember its name or exact wording, but it's basically reflecting that old things still in use have proven their value and flexibility, and are less likely to be just trends, and also have inertia and network effects.

+1. Sneakers is the best hacker movie we've made yet.

I think this is all good advice. Including the "type it out yourself" bit.

I'd add a recommendation for _Code Complete_ by Steve McConnell, which is like 2/3 Programming and 1/3 Software Engineering, and seems about right for your level of experience.

Beware of the Cormen et al "Introduction to Algorithms". It's a good book. But while it says "introduction", it's typically used for like a third-year undergrad who has a fair amount of programming, data structures, and algorithm experience already. It's more about algorithm _analysis_ - that is, how to prove things about algorithms and formally establish their run-time/complexity bounds - than about how to use or write them. Probably not what you want to start with.

Knuth's Art of Computer Programming is even more hardcore than that, imho. Probably not what a beginner wants unless you want to dive right in to the deep end.

SICP is more accessible but still pretty textbook-y.

But I don't actually know what I'd recommend instead. I did a CS undergrad degree, so Cormen and other textbooks are how I learned. But I did that over 5 years with lots of professional help. Dunno what a good self-study-friendly alternative is.

Seconding the recommendation of The Little Schemer, especially as a beginner book. Very accessible and low time investment, but even as an intermediate programmer when I read it, I got a lot out of it.

One more "yes, daily" here. I'm on Freenode for tech topics: #octave, ##matlab, #zsh, #bash, #machomebrew, and #macports are active and useful.

And I have a group of friends who are on a private IRC server and have been for years. We recently considered switching to a "modern" chat platform. Tried Slack, Matrix, Mattermost, Zulip, and a couple others. Decided we still liked the "feel" of IRC best. (I hate all the whitespace and decoration that modern PWAs use.)

Bouncers or IRCCloud solve the offline-delivery problem, and I can live without the other features that newer chat systems provide.

LimeChat is great. I use their mobile version, and it is about the fastest iOS app I've ever used.

I'm still Textual on the desktop, though.

"formulae" is plural for "formula".