Programming
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This week I’m trying out another Haskell intro book, Get Programming with Haskell by Will Kurt. Chapters 4 and 5 of Haskell Programming from First Principles slowed me way down, and the pace wasn’t going to work for my time frame. Plus my frustration with the book was growing. I hope to keep working through it, but I need a tour of the language that’s less abstract. After several obsessive hours of research this weekend, I have some more options, and I’ll start with Will Kurt.
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Kanban by David Anderson offers a quantitative approach to process improvement. It’s tied with Lean Software Development for my favorite Agile book so far. I’m looking forward to finding all my bottlenecks and setting my work-in-progress limits.
Space
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Space Is Open for Business by Robert Jacobson is a wide-ranging and inspiring survey of the present and future of the global space economy. Especially interesting were the chapters on the influence of science fiction. The book sparked more thoughts on how I might involve myself in space someday. In the meantime, it gives me a broader basis for researching how to keep track of this field.
I watched the SpaceX Inspiration4 charity space launch benefiting St. Jude Children’s Hospital. I haven’t really been keeping up with launches lately, so I caught it by accident, and it was worth sticking around for, a beautiful launch, complete with jellyfish effect. It was the first all-civilian spaceflight. Imagine having a day job and then moonlighting—as an astronaut. One of the crew, Hayley Arceneaux, is a physician’s assistant at St. Jude and a childhood cancer survivor. I think as a fundraiser it was very well done.
Religion
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I’m putting Christianity in context with Introduction to World Religions, edited by Christopher Partridge. I was planning on putting off my next religious investigations until I’d looked more into rationality, but events have led me into counter-apologetics YouTube, and my boss has been luring me into the world of David Bentley Hart. I’ll check out his Experience of God at some point. But for now I want to get the broad sweep of religious thought.
