Admittedly a cheesy opening, but I love its history and the sentiment behind it.
What is this?
I've decided to start writing some thoughts down as a way to guide my own curiosity, learn to synthesize ideas better, and share my learnings. This is a playground for myself, though I also want it to be open to whoever might be interested. I expect these to be explorations much more than finished pieces.
Why?
Being a very curious person by nature, I struggle with keeping my focus. I tend to start a few books at the same time, leave some, pick up new ones. A part of me deeply enjoys jumping around like this, hunting for interesting ideas. At the same time, I'm well aware of the benefits of diving deep in a single pursuit while pushing everything else out of focus. In fact, almost everything worthwhile I've accomplished in my life has followed an intense and long period of single focus. Jumping around is still very useful as a way to find what to focus on, but at some point I need to constrain myself to a given area so I can build a deeper understanding.
I also want to make information gathering a more active process. Integrating ideas in our own mental fabric requires work. I've too often been guilty of emerging from many hours of reading with little to show, my head spinning from the information overload. It feels like a special kind of gluttony and it's not a very efficient way to learn. I want to head off in the idea-jungle with a mission, so I can bring something of value back.
How?
The plan is to pick a relatively well-defined topic, spend a couple of weeks on it, and write something intelligible to summarize the findings. Everything is forever a work-in-progress: ideas evolve through time.
I'll start with a list of topics I find interesting and hope to explore in the near or far future (no specific order).
History
- History of personal computers & some of the big figures
- History of programming languages (this is an interesting entry point)
- I would love to explore this Wikipedia list of pioneers in computer science. It's an incredibly intriguing list that goes from Pāṇini to Satoshi Nakamoto.
Technical
- Abstractions (in the context of software engineering)
- How browsers work
- Asynchronous JavaScript (I still struggle with this much more than I would like)
- Data privacy
Broad
- Learning
- Teaching
- Tacit knowledge
- Performance psychology
- Collaboration
- Storytelling
- Creativity