I last wrote about the software I’m using while programming back in March.  I think at the time I was thinking of writing quarterly updates, but my preferences didn’t change with that much regularity. I decided to make it one of my annual posts instead. So here is the software I used in 2020 to program.

Python Projects

PyCharm

For my Python projects I transitioned fully to PyCharm Community Edition. I documented my reasons for moving towards Pycharm in this post with a followup here. As I was writing this, I learned of a Real Python guide to Pycharm that taught me a few things I didn’t know about how to make better use of PyCharm. PyCharm has made Python programming a real joy. For any libraries I have imported (or standard libraries), it provides excellent code completion as well as context for function or method arguments that saves me time vs looking it up in documentation. The git integration is also great and I’ve recently started exploring usage of the lower git window which may make GitQlient obsolete for my Python projects. I haven’t made the best use of the debugger yet, but I’m slowly learning how to take advantage of it in my larger projects. If you’re a Python programmer I can’t imagine a better IDE. I did have access to Pycharm Professional for a while in 2020, but I wasn’t doing any Flask or Django work, so I didn’t really notice anything useful over the community edition.

Because the pandemic left me at home for a couple months, this year I played about double the amount of games from my previous record. You can watch the video below or read the text below that to find out what I thought of the games I played this year and which game I named as my 2020 Game of the Year.

https://youtu.be/lC2G_fpzpAE

Gwent (73 hours 24 minutes): Other than playing the beta a few years ago, the last time I played a CCG was Magic the Gathering back in the mid-1990s. I had no idea I would end up so addicted to this game for the first half of 2020. Eventually what took me away from the game is the fact that to maximize your experience with the game, you have to play every day. And I just have so many other games I want to play, books I want to read, the kids and wife to hang out with. I couldn’t give that much to a game. I do still have it on my rotation, so I get to it now and again. When I play, I find it quite fun, so I think Gwent will be with me for a while.

Back in 2019, when I did my programming retrospective I made a few predictions. How did those go?

• Work on my Extra Life Donation Tracker? Yup! See below!
• Write more C++ thanks to Arduino? Not so much.
• C# thanks to Unity? Yes, but not in the way I thought. I only did minor work on my game, but I did start a new GameDev.tv class.
• Learning Ruby? Well, I wouldn’t necessarily say I learned Ruby. I did finish the book Ruby Wizardry and I took copious notes. But until I do some practice - maybe via some code katas, I don’t think I’ll have solidified it in my mind.
• 3D Game Dev? Nope, not really.
• Rust and Go? Not even close. Although I did make sure to get some books on the languages.

So, what happened? On the programming front, I wanted to continue my journey to truly master Python after having used it at a surface level for the past 15ish years. I dedicated myself to doing the Python Morsels challenges (more on that below) and working through various Python development exercises. Outside of programming, the time I had off from COVID was used to play with my kids and they wanted to play lots of video games. So we took advantage of having way more time than usual to do that. So a lot of my goals slipped. We’ll get to 2021 predictions at the end, so let’s take a look at 2020!

Recently I came across this video where a programmer solves the same problem in 6 different programming languages:

https://youtu.be/MKb4WD6mioE

What’s incredibly beautiful are the Haskell and APL solutions. Whereas every other language requires multiple lines, Haskell solves the problem in just one line. And APL is just a few symbols.

Here’s the same guy solving a problem from the Leetcode challenge in a few languages. Once again, it’s pretty neat how the elegance of the solution varies across languages:

This year continued last year’s trend of Sequels, Sanderson, and Science Fiction Magazines. Every series I mentioned last year was a series I continued reading this year - The Expanse, The Asylum Tales, Red Rising, The Dresden Files, The Mogoliad, Wild Cards, and the Illumination Paradox. (The only exception was Red Rising - I’m done with that series after the first trilogy.) I also continued to read sequels in The Wheel of Time, The Powder Mage series, The Just City, and Temeriere. As I did last year, I also read lots of books on electronics and programming as I started to beef up that chunk of my hobbies. As you’ll see if you read my 2020 programming post, this was a good year for me in programming. I also continued trying to catch up with Clarkesworld Magazine.

Thanks to COVID I missed out on the concert where I was going to see Paul and Storm and Jonathan Coulton. Compared to last year, I also barely bought any music.

This year I switched from using Ampache to listen to my music at work, to using Funkwhale. The more responsive interface has led to me playing a lot more albums as well as doing “artist radio” mode which plays all of an artists’ songs at random. This may have concentrated the scrobbles rather than having them be as random as in the past. That said, I did make good use of Funkwhale’s “Less Listened” radio to keep things fresh. At home I’ve been using Cantata’s “similar artists” dynamic playlists a lot which may also have contributed to a concentration of artists this year.

Twinmaker by Sean Williams

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When I started out with this book, I wasn’t sure if I was going to like it. It seemed to lean a bit heavily on the young adult plot with the love triangle aspect and the whole wanting to be Internet famous subplot. But it turned out those were just there to introduce the reader to the world and provide some stakes for our main character.

Firefight by Brandon Sanderson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I enjoyed this entry to the trilogy more than the first book. I think it might have to do with the fact that most of the world-building took place already. Or maybe it’s because it’s essentially just focused on one mission, giving that mission more narrative room to breathe. I also had fun getting into the weeds with the powers granted by Calamity now that we had the over-arching idea. Sanderson explores ideas of self-control, addiction, power over others, and fear. It ends up being pretty deep for a super-villain/freedom fighter book. I also think Sanderson does a good job of setting up some red herrings, even if the ultimate ending is somewhat easy to predict (then again, it is a YA book).

The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Dropping the rating from 4 stars (original) to 3 stars (second time through).

This is my second time reading through this book. First time was somewhere between 10-15 years ago. Going through it again, I realized just how much Mr. Pratchett improved as he iterated upon Discworld. Or, perhaps, it’s more accurate to say that this book had a different purpose than later Discworld books. This one is, essentially, a parody of where fantasy had evolved in the decades since The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. Pratchett takes tons fantasy tropes, hero’s journey tropes, fish out of water tropes and obliterates them or subverts them. A lot of what he introduces here continues throughout the 30+ book series, but there are places where I’m sure he would have done things differently had he known he’d carry on beyond a couple books.

Rhythm of War by Brandon Sanderson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Another masterwork by Brandon Sanderson in his Cosmere. I will say that, at times, some of the story seemed to drag, particularly character growth of the main characters. But not only is this made up by the incredible payoff at the end (I literally kept waking up the night I finished it as my brain obsessed over the epilogue and what it means for this series and the Cosmere as a whole), but the reader needs to consider this is book 4/10 in a planned series. Even with Sanderson having planned Stormlight as two five-book arcs, that would still mean that the climax of the arc would lie in the next book.