What Are You Reading?

[Tiger337]

On 10/19/2025 at 7:45 PM, Screwball said:

I think you are already a programmer, so Java might come real easy for you.

I tried to learn it once, back around 2005ish? It wasn't my first rodeo. I first learned a little, what was it, basic, that was one of the first DOS languages you could use? Dabbled in C, Java, a real goofy language called "Fourth", visual basic once we had windows (I did kind of like that), and an internal program used in my CAD system. I hated programming, which is why I avoided it, and made sure in every interview I told them I am NOT a programmer, if that's what you want, I'm not your guy.

I get the logic and all that, but it's not for me. I think only certain people have the gyro to do that, and I respect them greatly.

I was trained as a statistician, but programming is where I earn most of my money.  Programmers tend not to have much status, but most people are either not good at it or don't like it, so it has kept me employed.  They'll try to replace me with AI some day, but I'm getting close enough to retirement, so it probably won't matter.  Not many use it anymore but FORTRAN is still the best language I ever used.  You could do almost anything mathematical with just 40 different commands and it was so logical.  Some modern languages do some amazing things, but others seem unnecessarily complex.  

Edited 3 hours ago by Tiger337

[Tiger337]

On 1/20/2025 at 11:35 PM, lordstanley said:

I read 44 books in 2024. Of these, 30 were non-fiction, 14 were fiction. Also of the 44, men wrote 30 of them, women wrote 14 of them. I read almost exclusively on Kindle these days and did a purge/donation of most of my print books a few years ago. So while I don't really have  a physical library, I do keep track on a spreadsheet the title and author of each book I read and have done so since 2009.

Some of my favorites from 2024, in no particular order:

Non-Fiction

Endurance - Alfred Lansing (classic about doomed Antarctic expedition a century ago; one of the few books I've ever re-read, which I do every decade or so)

A Walk in the Park - Kevin Fedarko (Grand Canyon adventure)

Destiny Disrupted - Tamin Ansary  (history from an Islamic perspective)

How The Word Is Passed - Clint Smith (essays on race/slavery by visiting various sites with historical or modern significance)

To The Field Of Stars - Kevin Codd (on walking Spain's Camino de Santiago, which I did this September)

Why We Love Baseball - Joe Posnanski (considers dozens of moments and personalities over time, some familiar, some not so familiar)

The Teachers - Alexandra Robbins (an educator's perspective on the challenges and rewards of the profession)

Revelation For Normal People - Robyn Whitaker (making sense of the final book of the New Testament)

Fiction

Normal People - Sally Rooney (about two Irish teens growing into adulthood together and apart, made into a BBC TV series available on Hulu)

Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh (English aristocracy a century ago, made into a TV series in the '80s)

Kindred - Octavia Butler (late 20th century black woman who time travels back and forth between the South of the  early 1800s and today)

A Gentleman in Moscow - Amor Towles (Count returns to Russia around 1918, lives under house arrest in a hotel for the next quarter-century or so)

Margo's Got Money Troubles - Rufi Thorpe (fun; a single mom who was the child of a Hooters waitress and an ex-pro wrestler; turns to OnlyFans to make a living)

 

I read "A Walk in the Park" after reading this post.  It was really good.  

[Screwball]

27 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

I was trained as a statistician, but programming is where I earn most of my money.  Programmers tend not to have much status, but most people are either not good at it or don't like it, so it has kept me employed.  They'll try to replace me with AI some day, but I'm getting close enough to retirement, so it probably won't matter.  Not many use it anymore but FORTRAN is still the best language I ever used.  You could do almost anything mathematical with just 40 different commands and it was so logical.  Some modern languages do some amazing things, but others seem unnecessarily complex.  

I've heard of FORTRAN but never played with it. I guess at the end of the day we are turning all this into zero's and ones. No? 🙂

It's amazing what the computer has done. To think, in...I don't know...1972... I took typing in high school because there were a bunch of girls in the class. I wasn't alone, and probably one of the best things I ever did. Served me quite well over the years.

This kind of stuff fits AI, and we are training it to take our jobs. I'm glad I'm retired. AI is not the answer.

[ewsieg]

59 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

I was trained as a statistician, but programming is where I earn most of my money.  Programmers tend not to have much status, but most people are either not good at it or don't like it, so it has kept me employed.  They'll try to replace me with AI some day, but I'm getting close enough to retirement, so it probably won't matter.  Not many use it anymore but FORTRAN is still the best language I ever used.  You could do almost anything mathematical with just 40 different commands and it was so logical.  Some modern languages do some amazing things, but others seem unnecessarily complex.  

When I was getting my masters degree another women in my program was probably 25 or so and in high school she co-op'd at some tier I supplier and a bunch of old guys taught her fortran.  By the time we graduated, she was freelancing and doing quite well.  She said she was going to pursue fortran as long as it paid the bills, from what you say, I wonder if she's still playing with it today.

[Tiger337]

9 minutes ago, ewsieg said:

When I was getting my masters degree another women in my program was probably 25 or so and in high school she co-op'd at some tier I supplier and a bunch of old guys taught her fortran.  By the time we graduated, she was freelancing and doing quite well.  She said she was going to pursue fortran as long as it paid the bills, from what you say, I wonder if she's still playing with it today.

It is still used in fields like meteorology and aerospace, but languages like Python are now more typical for advanced mathematical computing. I have played around a little with Python and I like it. 

Edited 2 hours ago by Tiger337

[ewsieg]

3 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

It is still used in fields like meteorology and aerospace, but languages like Python are now more typical for advanced mathematical computing. I have played around a little with Python and I like it. 

I still play around with shell scripts from time to time.  If it works, it works.  Thankful for you guys that can build a script from ground up.  I've dabbled with perl/python, but usually it consists of me wanting something from 1 script and combining it with something another script does and cutting/pasting portions out until I get something useful.  

That said, AI does a pretty decent job now, for basic stuff at least.  We recently had a few of our servers shut down with no notice.  We lost some basic scripts I use regularly, like an IP calculator and a command line whois script.  I had working alternatives in our bin before a peer was even able to get a response from our server ops team on if they had any backups.