The best things and stuff of 2011 by Fogus

14 years ago (blog.fogus.me)

Is it just me, or does anyone else feel like an underachiever after reading that? :-/ In comparison my year feels like I spent it watching re-runs on TV in my pajamas with a bowl of Cheetos by my side.

On a serious note, that is an excellent selection of papers and books - Thanks fogus. You have me very inspired for 2012. Now, on to get some reading done.

  • Always remember, no matter how hard you work it's important to take some Cheeto time occasionally.

    • Thanks fogus. FWIW awesome work by you, the Clojure and the ClojureScript team this year. Kudos! Looking forward to more informative posts in 2012

  • I've done and learned a lot this year but I've never been much of a books and paper reader. Perhaps you've done more constructive things than just eating Cheetos behind the TV? (And even if not, I hope you at least enjoyed it?)

    • Absolutely. My comment was a little tongue-in-cheek - That's not to take away from everything fogus (and many like him) have accomplished.

      It's just that after reading a post like that, it makes me think that I need a little bit more focus. I get attracted to new shiny things, but I still have a day job - which means that outside of shifting contexts a lot, I also shift my focus a lot.

      A post like this makes me think that perhaps I need to dedicate a considerable amount of time to learning something new (Clojure in my case) and sticking with it.

      And to answer your question, I did accomplish quite a lot this year (in my own little way). And I did enjoy it. Thank you.

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  • Not I. Made a decision not to waste too much time just to read, rather "do".

    • That's great if it works for you, but I can't sit and "do" day after day hour after hour. I need some time to reflect. I need some time to explore a problem more deeply. I need to forget about "do" completely sometimes and just read a book about zombies. I'm far more productive at the "do" if I do something other than "do" as a supplement.

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Excited that fogus included core.logic https://github.com/clojure/core.logic as one of his favorite code reads of 2011. Most of the credit of course goes to Dan Friedman, Will Byrd, Oleg Kiselyov (+ many other miniKanreners), Rich Hickey, Clojure/core, and the Clojure community for providing the literature, implementations, tools, and enthusiasm to make it all possible. Looking forward to seeing where it all goes in 2012.

  • Thanks for a very exciting and productive year with your work on core.logic. Can't wait to see how it gets used in the future!

Is there something similar to Org-mode for vi?

  • There are a couple of work-in-progress `org-mode` clones for Vim, VimOrganizer in particular. However, I do not feel comfortable recommending either VimOrganizer or its counterparts. Personally, I've realized that any `org-mode` implementation to Vim would be going against the editor's nature. I might recommend TaskWarrior if you're looking for command-line GTD application as an alternative to `org-mode`.

  • Yes, it's called Unix.

    I mean, that sounds glib, but a lot of the Unix toolchain involves text: searching it, typesetting it, (automatically) editing it, and so on. You can use make to automate static HTML generation from a tree of Markdown files, for example.

    vi lacks the "persistent, integrated environment" aspect of Emacs, which is what sustains tools like org-mode. vim can edit multiple files, have multiple windows, and the like, but it wasn't a fundamental design principle. You may be better off using a couple simple scripts and using vi(m) where it shines: editing text.

  • If you're not totally against using Emacs: it has Vi(m) emulating modes so you can at least try org-mode out and perhaps port it to vi if you happen to like it.