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Books

The Nature of Code

Daniel Shiffman

Recommended by 1 person on the record.

The bar next to each date shows how long ago it was said: 6d is days, 4yr is years.

Adam Tornhill loved it
This book is a beautiful introduction to simulations of natural systems. We get concise prose, clear illustrations, and carefully chosen systems with a guided tour through the math. All done in the Processing language, which is fun and easy to pick up. The reason I like this book so much is probably due to timing. In 2013, I was on the verge of abandoning software development. I was fed up. (That's a story for another time.) Instead, I planned to go into cognitive psychology full-time as a researcher. This book brought back the joy in programming for me. Sometimes, a good book is the book that motivated you.

on adamtornhill.substack.com · 11 Aug 2026

This book on rcmnd →

That little bar

It says how long ago something was said, so you can tell last month from 2014 without doing the arithmetic. Full and green is recent; it drains and cools as the date gets older, and empties completely at about 6 years.

A striped bar means the date itself is an estimate — the source did not carry an exact one. An entry with no date at all gets no bar.