Professional

• I’ve successfully finished SICP in April. Since then I’ve received a lot of positive feedback, and even a copy of the book signed by the authors!
• In May I’ve made a major switch from Perl to Python as my main development language. I’ve written lots of Python code since then: a Tetris clone, demos of dynamic plots with wxPython and matplotlib, a complete parser for the ANSI C language, played with web programming using the Turbogears framework and began writing a game with PyGame.
• I’ve also written several interesting articles this year. Some of them got a lot of publicity, especially the one on reading C type declarations.
• Even at work, the shift to Python was influential. I’ve written several small Python applications and rewrote a few of my old Perl scripts in Python. I’ve also managed to inspire several co-workers to switch to Python.
• Also at work, I did some low level C coding for micro-controllers, VHDL coding for an FPGA, a complex VHDL + Python testbench and lots of management / system design work on a new sub-system developed under my supervision.

Reading

Here’s the list of new books I’ve read during 2008 (in reverse-chronological order). This year I’ve also re-read a few of my old favorites. They are not included in this list, because I’ve already posted reviews for them in previous years.

1. "The Third Chimpanzee" by Jared Diamond
2. "Border Crosser" by Avner Shur (Heb)
3. "East of Eden" by John Steinbeck
4. "Beginning game development with Python and Pygame" by Will McGugan
5. "Philosophy: Who Needs It" by Ayn Rand
6. "Jewish children" by Sholem Aleichem (Audio)
7. "A voyage long and strange" by Tony Horwitz
8. "The adventures of Hucleberry Finn" by Mark Twain (Audio)
9. "A Certain Ambiguity: A mathematical novel" by G. Suri and H. Bal
10. "American Prometheus – The triumph and tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer" by K. Bird and M. Sherwin
11. "The State of the Jews" by Theodor Herzl (Audio, Heb)
12. "The Wisdom of Shepherds" by Rhett Ellis
13. "Discourse on the Method" by René Descartes (Audio)
14. "The extended phenotype" by Richard Dawkins
15. "Clear and present danger" by Tom Clancy (Spa)
16. "The odd brain" by Stephen Juan (Heb)
17. "Perfume" by Patrick Süskind (Heb)
18. "Programming Pearls" by Jon Bentley
19. "The adventures of Tom Sawyer" by Mark Twain (Audio)
20. "The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin" by Benjamin Franklin (Audio)
21. "After Tamerlane" by John Darwin
22. "Rocket Boys" by Homer Hickam
23. "Naked economics" by Charles Wheelan
24. "Genetics for dummies" by Tara Rodden Robinson
25. "Mitla Pass" by Leon Uris
26. "The conquest of the Incas" by John Hemming
27. "After the quake" by Haruki Murakami (Heb)
28. "Cien años de soledad" by Gabriel García Márquez (Spa)
29. "Peter the Great" by Jacob Abbott (Audio)
30. "The feast of the goat" by Mario Vargas Llosa
31. "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs" by Harold Abelson, Gerald Jay Sussman
32. "The soul of a new machine" by Tracy Kidder
33. "Cannery row" by John Steinbeck
34. "My Michael" by Amos Oz (Heb)
35. "The Last Templar" by Raymond Khoury
36. "Alexander the great" by Peter Abbott (Audio)
37. "The Book Thief" by Markus Zusak
38. "His Last Bow" by Arthur Conan Doyle (Audio)
39. "Idiot" by Fyodor Dostoevsky (Rus)
40. "Uncle Tom’s cabin" by Harriet Beecher Stowe (Audio)
41. "The volunteer" by Michael Ross (Heb)
42. "The origin of species" by Charles Darwin
43. "A thousand splendid suns" by Khaled Hosseini
44. "Stardust" by Neil Gaiman (Heb)
45. "Everything is illuminated" by Jonathan Safran Foer
46. "A short history of the United States" by Edward Channing (Audio)
47. "War and peace" by Leo Tolstoy (Rus)
48. "Wisdom of the pretzel" by Ilan Heitner (Heb)

By language: 9 Hebrew, 2 Russian, 2 Spanish, 35 English. Also, 11 of the books were on audio.

Favorite books:

• Technical: that would be SICP, no doubt
• Non-fiction: "Naked Economics", with "Genetics for Dummies" a close second
• Fiction: "War and Peace", which I’ve re-read this year and posted a review for the first time.

I wrote previously that I want to shift my focus from reading lots of books to reading good books really well. Although this year I’ve tried following this goal by re-reading several of my favorite books, looking at the full list I think I could have spent my time better.

So next year I think I’m going to post a much shorter list. This is mainly because I want to concentrate on studying some topics more in depth. Naturally, I’ll make intermissions with lighter reading, so the list is definitely not going to be empty.

Also, there are 11 audio books on this year’s lists. These I "read" on the ride from work home. I’ve now found a really nice Spanish course I listen to which will take me a couple more months to go through, so there are going to be much less audio book listening this year as well.

Languages

For the first time in these summaries I want to place a "languages" section. My Spanish studies are going quite well, which got a real-life proof when we were in Peru this spring. It appears that after some short acclimatization, I’m able to converse with native Spanish speakers – they understand me well, and I also understand most of what they’re saying (if they’re speaking slowly).

I’ve finished reading "Cien años de soledad" this year, and while I can’t say frankly that it was easy (it was hard!), it’s a landmark none the less. I’ve also read a lighter book by Tom Clancey that was really easy. Next year, I’m planning to reread "The Count of Monte-Cristo" en español.

Also, I’ve began listening to a long and detailed Spanish audio course, and it will continue deep into 2009. It’s a good course and I’m learning how to quickly build Spanish sentences.