I didn’t make The Strange Loop this year, unfortunately. I’ve been watching some of the talks on YouTube.

Emery Berger’s Performance Matters has been making the rounds, and is well worth the time. I used Dr. Berger’s Hoard allocator in the experiments for my dissertation. Listening to his talk made me miss my former life a little – benchmarking, performance analysis, and optimization – though I still prefer what I do now, focusing on applications rather than infrastructure.

There’s also an interesting talk about the New York Times Crossword. I didn’t know that Will Shortz has a degree in enigmatology, the study of puzzles.