{"id":1756,"date":"2015-12-31T00:05:54","date_gmt":"2015-12-31T08:05:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/?p=1756"},"modified":"2016-01-03T23:44:36","modified_gmt":"2016-01-04T07:44:36","slug":"2015-year-in-reverse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/2015\/12\/2015-year-in-reverse\/","title":{"rendered":"2015 Year In Reverse"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Previously<\/a>, previously<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Dear reader (that's reader<\/em> in the singular because I doubt that there are two actual humans<\/a> who read my blog; it's not because<\/a> there are many and I'm addressing you individually), it's that time of the year again\u2014the time of the year when it stops being the year. A time to think thoughtfully and ask, "What happened since the last time we did this?"<\/p>\n

In the year 2015, this blog has seen (at press time) 43<\/em> posts and 30<\/em> comments. Among these\u2014<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

We shared a recipe for a more-wholesome-than-some-of-the-likely-alternatives breakfast<\/a> (although honestly, I worry about coffee having unknown-to-me degenerative effects on the brain\u2014just because lots of people in your Society indulge in a drug doesn't mean it's safe<\/em>; it just means that any long-term damage has to be subtle<\/em> enough that people still feel safe using it\u2014and is that really so high of a bar?). We heard some error message free verse<\/a>. I wished for a crypto subplot<\/a> in the yet-unnamed 2017 Star Trek<\/em> series. A train was late<\/a>. We heard a poem about sin<\/a> and a p\u00e6an to one's employer<\/a>. A tablet app for sports recordkeeping enthusiasts<\/a> was proposed. I got mail<\/a>. We considered the quiet holocaust of things left unsaid<\/a> perpetrated by the forces of laziness and evil that lurk in people's hearts. I got a patch into OpenStack Swift<\/a> (ninth draft landed as 06bede894<\/a> on 7 October, first draft proposed for review<\/a> on 19 July). You heard about some of my favorite things in September<\/a>. We went back to basics<\/a> on the justification of a classic property of arithmetic. I commented on a certain matter of misperceived incentives<\/a>, and another matter of determination in the absence of what others could discern as incentives<\/a>. I went to the first Rust conference<\/a>. My bold investigative reporting showed that the seemingly-straightforward $<\/code> directive treacherously means different things to different regular-expression engines<\/a>. I confessed to favoring a nonstandard pronunciation of a file extension<\/a>. I mentioned that I was trying to write a compiler<\/a>, although honestly, I don't think it went so well (the lexer, parser, and obligatory Emacs mode weren't that<\/em> bad, but I kind of intuited the context-handling and code-generation parts, and should really get farther in the textbook and give it another try later). I explained how erasure codes work<\/a>. We heard some more error-message poetry<\/a>. Some readers of this blog (!!) relieved me of some of my confusion<\/a> about why the Rust borrow-checker rejects bad code that you might think is good if you grew up the cartoon fantasy world that calls itself Python. I explained why "Pi Day" is an unholy festival of sin that is corrupting our children<\/a>. You heard from me during February<\/a>, and we saw a macro that is just too<\/em> cute<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Beyond these, there are many more things that remain to be said.<\/p>\n

But they will have to wait until next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Previously, previously.) Dear reader (that's reader in the singular because I doubt that there are two actual humans who read my blog; it's not because there are many and I'm addressing you individually), it's that time of the year again\u2014the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8],"tags":[16],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1756"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1756"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1756\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1760,"href":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1756\/revisions\/1760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}