December was rather busy for me, but as often, the last week of the year is rather quiet, and I’m finally able to pop and shift from my overflowing reading list.

The ‘Three-Body Problem’, the Imperative of Survival, and the Misogyny of Reactionary Rhetoric

Fascinating take of the Three-Body Problem trilogy and its underlying ideology. I haven’t read the whole trilogy, since I found the first novel a drag – quite frankly, I still don’t understand its appeal. I remember feeling a bit unsettled by the overall atmosphere of the book, without being able to pinpoint why. Maybe it has something to do with the issues raised by Chenchen Zhang in this essay?

Apparently the thing I call TDD might not be quite TDD

Well, my practice of TDD is closer to Ron Jeffries’ than Kent Beck’s, so I guess that I am not doing TDD either. Or Canon TDD, at least.

Web Components

“Component” is probably my most loathed word of 2023: it is everywhere and doesn’t mean anything anymore. Yet, this article lays down a great explanation of what web components are (spoiler: many different but related things at once), nicely illustrated by actual working code.

Goodbye, Clean Code

A good lesson on the difference between looking good and good-looking. “Style over substance” is great when playing Cyberpunk RED; not to much when writing real-life software.