To say half of the articles went over my head is an understatement. I did however enjoy the common themes among the majority of the articles. The ‘How The Internet Works’ video was really informative and I never thought there were that many pieces in play. I was already familiar with the concept that websites are on servers and that’s the very reason Bluehost charges me as much as they do.

The technological timeline of the Internet and other things is really inspiring and it really makes you think how much things will advance in the next 30 years. Perhaps we’ll never have to deal with slow 3G internet on phones again (one can only hope).

The ‘Rethinking Our Thinking’ article on The Linchpen was informative, yet made you think about the parallels between programming and journalism. I respect the journalism profession and I’m even more intrigued after seeing shows like the House of Cards.

The article on computational thinking advanced the notion of programmers and journalists seeking the same goals just in different languages. It made the case for journalists to learn about programming because its another way of delivering a story instead of the declining traditional print method. A few of the parallels were reaching, but I could appreciate the insight.

The ‘Pragmatic Programmer Quick Reference Guide’ was anything but quick, but it was well-written. The Unix Philosophy was also well-written, it just happened to go over my head. The overarching themes I got out of both articles was the need to write clean code, to always keep the end user in mind and to limit bugs by building in a way that helps you test. A few of the rules were filled with jargon, I imagine I will understand as I learn more.

My favorite articles were the WordPress and GNU philosophies. They described a community of do-gooders that are writing and creating great software to help the end users. The GNU philosophy focused more on the concept of freedom of speech and urged the need to make your code easily accessible to others so they can use it for their own projects or to improve upon your work. It made me think of scientists who write about their experiments and advances so that one day people can read their journals and replicate their results and build upon them. It’s a way to continue your legacy and make an impact on technology as a whole. I am familiar with WordPress and I believe that they truly operate behind that philosophy. It’s a great CMS platform that is versatile among many industry verticals.

The Zen of Python is eloquently written and also focuses on the need to write clean code and simplify everything if it could be made simpler. I imagine that Python users keep those words in mind when writing code. The words seem to be engrained deep into the programming culture (if there is such a thing). All of the articles gave me great insight into what programmers attempt to achieve with every line of code.