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Thank you! I knew that existed, but now that I read the synopsis I'm thinking that the C++20/23 material makes sense in this "tour" book... the C++11 (and earlier) material in The C++ Programming Language is like the basis for the language, and everything that came after is more advanced in usage. I guess.

Anyway, maybe all obvious observations but thank you nonetheless

In college we had Mojo for downloading tracks out of other people's iTunes, for a precious little amount of time (maybe just a year or year and a half before they released an update that killed the actual filesharing). It was always fun finding hidden gems in people's libraries - learned about some of my favorite artists that way.

I've cracked into quite a few programming books over the years and it's pretty crazy how much of an advantage it's given me. I'm a lowly systems engineer, not even a real programmer, but I definitely understand networking better than the majority of programmers at my company because I read Stevens' TCP/IP Illustrated 10 years back. (and I read the OLD version from the 90s that was already dated when I read it!) And then I read UNIX Network Programming to help understand all the different sockets APIs and that's paid dividends too, because I get our network programming code better than most of my coworkers too.

Then there was that one time I was self-studying computer architecture (Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective) and was able to turn what I learned around and hack our binary code at a customer site because I wasn't in an environment where I could compile our code... and then years later, when I wanted to analyze the ROM of a 90s electronic device with a much simpler instruction set than x86, I wasn't afraid to crack open the thing in Ghidra

Let's see, what else have I read that's paid dividends over the years:

- Modern Operating Systems (Tannenbaum)

- Learning Python (Lutz)

- JavaScript - The Definitive Guide (Flanagan)

- Programming PHP (Tatroe)

- Learning Web Design (Robbins)

- Algorithms (Sedgewick)

- A book I read whose name escapes me now, about technologies like RS-282/RS-484 and serial communications in general

- (I could probably put down Cuckoo's Egg too as an "inspiration" for me ultimately getting interested in computers and networking, and I bet that's not too uncommon a story)

It's probably a sign of my age (mid 30s for reference), but when I'm curious about something and want to learn it really deeply - I look for a good book on the topic. (although I'm willing to admit that maybe this process hinders me in some ways, because it means I sometimes spend more time studying than I actually do working with a thing - I have spent a LOT more time reading about circuits than building them - but I like studying so I'm happy either way)

I still find myself hoping (probably futilely) that Bjarne Stroustrop will come out with a new edition of The C++ Programming Language, to help me understand all the features that have been added to it since C++14...

Before I RTFA, I was wondering if this would be about trying to find a way to include Wayback Machine results in search. Searching the Wayback Machine is always such a nightmare, and wouldn't it be nice if your search turned up that long-dead 1997 web page that has the exact answer for what you're looking for...

(minor use case I had recently was I was trying to find old Japanese blogs for Tamagotchis, which I gather there were a ton of in the 90s but almost none survive today - imagine if I could get those instead of the 1,000,000 sites just trying to sell them to me)

My girlfriend has been getting into crocheting recently, and I've been learning a lot about it and craft stuff in general.

I've always been a computer guy... I'm bad with my hands. Could never do origami. Part of the reason I dropped out of Boy Scouts was I didn't want to learn how to make knots. I was terrible in art class, I can't draw and I honestly have trouble just visualizing things (I was not great in geometry either). It's difficult for me to be creative like that. So that's my background, lol.

I could play music (and that's a hobby I still want to pursue), but lately I've been wondering if there was a craft that was better for people like me. Like, I got these cute handmade plushies as a gift recently, and I want to do something like that.

(honestly it seems like crocheting and knitting might not be bad options, but just wondering what else is out there!)

e; one thing I've considered is making something with electronics (I know enough about circuits to be dangerous), but the thing you run into quickly is you don't really want to just give somebody a circuit board, lol. At some point, it seems like all the interesting projects move towards 3D printing which I find intimidating.

I am definitely interested in how things look for STEM majors on average, and whether they've seen a similar decline. Although the article has a quote from a math professor, and that's certainly not a degree you get into without some level of dedication.

When I was an undergrad (2008-2012) I don't think I even had any classes that were given as PowerPoint slides. If they had been though, I don't think I would have felt bad asking for them - they definitely could have helped jog my memory! Notes aren't always perfect...

Years ago (like 2013), I had an actual use case for lynx, which was that I was staying at a hotel long-term and I couldn't access the Wi-Fi landing page from my browser for some reason. But I could hit it from lynx, so I'd just log in from there every day.

Never had to do that since, but it sure saved my ass back then...

Have to say, it bothers me a little bit that they named it Carbon. I associate that term strongly with the old Carbon API from Apple.

Carbon was officially removed with 10.15 Catalina in 2019 - what's the statute of limitations on reusing a name like this?

I saw a Discord server use this but it never actually caught anything. Turns out all the spammers were just human idiots!

I get the week between Christmas and New Year's off and then I take a bunch of my PTO in December. It's not an official break or anything.

Last year I got stuck on Day 12 for a full week, and thinking about how to solve it consumed my every waking moment. I think this year, I'm going to be kind to myself and not participate so I can really enjoy the winter break from work.

Last year I read How to Solve It and the first half of one of Polya's other books - Mathematics and Plausible Reasoning. I certainly didn't commit them to memory, and I never systematically tried to apply them during self-study, but they do sometimes help give me a pointer in the right direction (i.e. trying to think of auxiliary problems to solve, trying to find a way to make the known & unknown closer together... etc.).

Auxiliary problems are something that always screwed me in college, when we were doing Baby Rudin, if a proof required a lemma or something first I usually couldn't figure out the lemma. Or in general, if I didn't quickly find the 'insight' needed to prove something, I often got frustrated and gave up.

This material seems like it would be good to actually teach in school, just like a general 'how to think and approach mathematical problems'. Feels kinda weird that I had to seek out the material as an adult...

One other thing I got out of the Polya books, was I realized how little I remember about geometry. So many of their examples are geometrical and that made them harder for me to grok. That's something I wish I could revisit.