ABIAN was always my friends and my favourite, from our time on Usenet! His all caps .sig with "equivalence of MASS and TIME" is something I will always treasure.

As a Swift noob, I would appreciate hearing what these foot traps are. This is in the context of Swift as a systems programming language?

From the page: a global version is available too -- https://river-runner-global.samlearner.com

Conway's Life? Or DNA?

yes

This reminds me so much of the old story about how a user called support to tell them their floppy drive wasn't working. When the tech got there, the computer had no floppy drives, and the user had been forcing the disks in the gap between the drive blank plates.

Dune: re-read the first time since I was a teenager. Mostly to compare my memory of it against the films.

Foundation and Second Foundation: for much the same reason.

Both very enjoyable reads, but quite different from the modern interpretations.

"How Life Works: a users guide to the new biology" by Phillip Ball. Really extended my understanding of where biology is now.

I read five of the Foundation books (stopping before Prelude) in 2024. I had read them as a kid and loved them, but three (plus) decades later and they just didn’t hold up as well as I hoped.

The Mule is still great, though.

> Chaos by James Gleick

I read this quite a while ago, and can't remember it at all. What did you think of it?

> The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth

Loved this when I was a kid.

The Gleick book is a good quick introduction to complexity.

Introduction to the Theory of Complex Systems is an incredible second book on the subject but it wouldn't be fair to compare it to the Gleick book.

I enjoyed How The World Really Works also.

It’s a great introduction to chaos theory and emergent phenomena. Makes you look at the world in a different way!

I have read the first one many times. Such a great read, will have to tackle the rest of the series next year.

> Project Hail Marry by Andy Weir

The only Andy Weir book I've read. Loved it.

I first picked up this style from the GNU C++ style guide, and it's so handy I use it in every language that accepts it.