Preface

One of the most common questions I see from prospective programmers and computer scientists is "where should I start?". My answer to that is a pretty consistent one: learn how to solve problems effectively. But that's vague and not really all that helpful, so I figured that I should actually tackle this in a little more depth by touching on something more specific.

Specifically, I want to touch on the subject of how to think about complex problems.

The Rationale Behind Learning

Before we can better understand how to effectively solve problems, it's important to consider how it is that we learn. With any subject, the standard approach is to begin with the bare basics. For programming, that's writing a Hello, World! program in the new language you're working with. For foreign languages, you learn basic common words and sentence structure. For math, you learn your basic arithmetic operations like addition and multiplication.

From there, we add on more additional complexity and string together everything we've learned. For a foreign language, this looks like learning about new words, stringing them together in your own sentences, then learning about verb tenses and throwing them into the mix as well. With math, you take your normal number crunching and suddenly throw the concept of order of operations into the mix, then variables and how to solve for them.

As a general rule, we first get comfortable with solving a simple problem and gradually build up toward solving increasingly more difficult ones.

The Missing Piece

Odds are that we've all sat in a math class at one point, and when the teacher asked a student how to solve a problem, they received an immediate "I don't know". You may or may not have been that kid yourself. I have no intention of shaming the kids who struggled (or those who still struggle) with math. Rather, I want to point to what I believe is the fundamental cause of that mental barrier that has frustrated students for generations.

Learning is not simply a matter of adding more complexity to problems. A key part of learning, and one that I don't recall ever having emphasized during my grade school studies, is your ability to break problems down into the steps that you know how to complete and combine the different, simpler skills you've already learned to arrive at a solution. Instead, you were expected to solve many of those complex problems and learn through practice, or through pure rote memorization.

What determined whether or not you could solve those problems was then a question of whether or not you could intuit or memorize how to solve those specific problems, and brand new problems that still made use of the same skill sets but had completely different forms would throw a wrench in that. Those who could solve any of those problems--those who, I would argue, were often mistakenly referred to as "geniuses" or "talented"--were really just those who knew how to break a problem down into simpler pieces.

This isn't a failing on the students, but on the way they've been taught to think about problems.

Reducing Problems

What does it mean to "break down" a problem, though? The few times I recall a teacher ever touching on the subject, "break down the problem" and "use the skills you've already learned" were the kinds of pieces of advice passed around, completely vague and devoid of meaning for anyone who didn't already understand. How can we better grasp this important step?

There's a term in complexity theory known as "reduction". The general idea is that if you have problems A and B, where you already know how to solve B, then if you can transform problem A so that it looks like problem B, then you can use your solution for B to solve at least part of A.

In other words, finding the solution to a more complex problem is just a matter of finding a way to make it look like a problem you already know how to solve.

The advice to "break down" a problem really means to perform this process of "reduction", of transforming your more complicated problem A into your simpler, known problem B.

In Practice

We're still discussing a vague concept, but now that we have more specific language to work with, we can more easily see how it works in practice (a reduction of its own!).

Let's consider a conceptually simple problem: grabbing the k^th largest (or smallest) item from a list. How do we solve this problem? Probably the most obvious and straightforward answer is to sort the list then grab the k^th item, right?

Notice that we gave two high-level descriptions of the steps we need to solve this problem: sorting, then grabbing the appropriate item. We can therefore then state that the problem of "grab the k^th largest/smallest item from a list" can be reduced to the two problems "sort a list" and "grab the k^th item from a list".

Now, let's say we're given the problem "take this list of competitor times from the race and tell me what the top 10 race times were". What do we know about this problem? We know that we're being given a list, and we know that we need the 10 smallest items from that list. We also know that "10 smallest items" is just shorthand for "the 1st smallest item, the 2nd smallest item, ..., and the 10th smallest item". We can therefore reduce this problem to the previous one we solved by transforming it into "grab the k^th smallest item from a list" and "repeat for values 1-10 for k".

Practical Advice

In the end, my explanation may not have helped much at all in actually grasping the concept of reduction. My intent isn't necessarily to help you understand it immediately, but to provide you a framework for a way of thinking. Even if you do grasp the general concept, you may even wonder how you're supposed to recognize these kinds of reductions out in the wild in non-academic environments. The answer, perhaps annoying, is practice. Much like an appraiser can only become good at discerning details through experience, a programmer or computer scientist can only recognize these patterns through repeated exposure.

In general, if I had to narrow it down to a small list of tips for improving your problem solving skills, this would be it:

• Work on grasping the concept of reduction itself.
• Expose yourself to lots of new problems.
• Don't shy away from difficult problems. Reduce them as much as you can and solve the pieces you're able to. Try to research the pieces you're struggling with. Return to the problem later when you have more experience if you have to, but take a crack at it first.
• Don't accept "I don't know" as an answer in itself. Ask yourself why you don't how to solve a problem. Narrow down which pieces you're able to solve and which pieces you're not.
• Just solve problems. Any problems. Easy ones, hard ones, and anything in between. Solving problems is a skill, and practicing it will make you better at solving problems in general, and better at recognizing the simpler problems inside of more complicated ones.
• Don't just come up with a solution to a problem. Ensure that you understand how each piece of it works and why it works. Copy-pasting from StackOverflow can be a valid tool at your disposal, but doing so mindlessly isn't nearly as valuable as reviewing the solution, being able to determine whether or not it works before ever executing the code, and being able to discard anything unnecessary from it.

Final Thoughts

I'm not an authoritative voice on this subject. I'm not an educator. More than anything, I'm a life-long student and an enthusiast. There's seldom a day when I don't have to research something new in order to solve a problem I'm not familiar with, or remind myself the syntax for a function I've used several times in the past. I don't know anything about teaching others, but I do know plenty about learning, and if there's anything that has stood out to me over the years, it's the fact that I find it easier to learn about something or to solve a problem if I can transform the concept into something that's easier for me to grasp.

Moreover, I'm human and thus prone to mistakes. Call me out on them if you notice them. I'll take any of my mistakes as learning opportunities :)

We're at week 14, friends. Here we've got this week's user-voted record: Public Strain by Women!

Taken from @Cleb's pitch:

Noisy post-punk that sounds exactly like the image the cover depicts: Marching your way through a cold wasteland in the middle of a blizzard. It builds a wonderfully hopeless atmosphere and comes together so well.

Here's the place to discuss your thoughts on the record, your history with it or the artist, and basically talk about whatever you want to that goes along with Public Strain. Remember that this is intended to be a slow moving thing, feel free to take your time and comment at any point in the week!

If you'd like to stream or buy the album, it can be found on most platforms here.

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something!

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

My reminder didn't go off and I didn't realize until today, berate me for being late.

Anyway, what have you been watching/reading this week?

Feel free to talk about something you saw that was cool, something that was bad, ask for recommendations, or anything else you can think of.

If you want to, feel free to find the thing you're talking about and link to its Anilist, MAL, or any other anime/manga database you use!

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something!

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

Hey there! We just hit week 13, and it's time for another classic record discussion: Black Sabbath's Paranoid!

Paranoid is the second studio album by the English rock band Black Sabbath. Released in September 1970, it was the band's only LP to top the UK Albums Chart until the release of 13 in 2013. Paranoid contains several of the band's signature songs, including "Iron Man", "War Pigs" and the title track, which was the band's only Top 20 hit, reaching number 4 in the UK charts. It is often cited as an influential album in the development of heavy metal music.

Here's the place to discuss your thoughts on the record, your history with it or the artist, and basically talk about whatever you want to that goes along with Paranoid. Remember that this is intended to be a slow moving thing, feel free to take your time and comment at any point in the week!

If you'd like to stream or buy the album, it can be found on most platforms here.

Don't forget to nominate and vote for next week's obscure record in response to this comment!

Remembering to post this on time edition.

Anyway, what have you been watching/reading this week?

Feel free to talk about something you saw that was cool, something that was bad, ask for recommendations, or anything else you can think of.

If you want to, feel free to find the thing you're talking about and link to its Anilist, MAL, or any other anime/manga database you use!

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something!

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

Day and a half late edition.

Anyway, what have you been watching/reading this week?

Feel free to talk about something you saw that was cool, something that was bad, ask for recommendations, or anything else you can think of.

If you want to, feel free to find the thing you're talking about and link to its Anilist, MAL, or any other anime/manga database you use!

Week 12! Here we've got this week's user-voted record: Heart of My Own by Basia Bulat!

Taken from @cfabbro's pitch:

I would like to nominate Heart Of My Own by Basia Bulat, a Polish-Canadian folk singer-songwriter. I absolutely adore her and think she is criminally underrated even here in Canada. Oddly enough, she did get a chance to do an NPR Tiny Desk Concert a number of years ago though, which was amazing.

The Youtube playlist for the album is a bit broken but both Spotify and Soundcloud have the whole thing:
https://open.spotify.com/album/6KCtZck76UV1ym4mthQOWH
https://soundcloud.com/basia_bulat/sets/heart-of-my-own

Here's the place to discuss your thoughts on the record, your history with it or the artist, and basically talk about whatever you want to that goes along with Heart of My Own. Remember that this is intended to be a slow moving thing, feel free to take your time and comment at any point in the week!

If you'd like to stream or buy the album, it can be found on most platforms here.

Preface

Over the last couple of years, I've had the opportunity to learn from the mistakes of my predecessors and put those lessons into practice. Among those lessons, three have stood out to me in particular:

1. Consistency is king.
2. Try not to be too clever for your own good.
3. Good code takes time.

I know that there are a lot of new and aspiring programmers here (and I'm admittedly far from being a guru myself), so I thought it would be good to touch on these three lessons, what they mean, and why they're so important.

Consistency is King

This is something that I had drilled into my head over nearly two years working on the code base at my previous job. Not by my fellow programmers (who did not exist), nor by my boss, but by the code itself.

Consistency can mean a number of things, but there are two primary points that matter:

1. Syntactic consistency.
2. Architectural consistency.

Syntactic consistency concerns standards in what your code looks like. For example, the choice between snake_case or camelCase or PascalCase for naming; function parameter order; or even something as benign as what kind of indentation and how much of it you use.

Architectural consistency concerns standards in how you structure your code. Making sure that you either use public class properties or getter and setter methods; using multiple booleans or using bitmasks; using or not using objects for encapsulating data to be passed around; validating data within the primary object or relegating that responsibility to a validator class; and other seemingly minor decisions about how you handle certain behavior make a big difference.

The code base I maintained had no such consistency. You could never remember whether the method you needed to call was named using snake_case or camelCase and had to perform several searches just to find it. Worse still, some methods defined to handle Ajax calls were prefixed with ajax while many weren't. Argument ordering seemed to be determined by a coin flip, and indentation seemed to vary between 2-space, 3-space, 4-space, and even 5-space indentation depending on what mood my predecessor was in at the time. You often could not tell where a function's body began and where it ended. Writing code was an exercise both in problem solving and in deciphering ancient religious texts.

Architecturally it was no better. There was no standardization in how data was validated or sanitized, how class members were accessed or modified, how functionality was inherited, whether the functionality was encapsulated in an object method or in a function, or which objects were responsible for which behavior.

That lack of consistency makes introducing or modifying a small feature, a task which should ordinarily be a breeze, an engineering feat of its own. Often you end up implementing that feature, after dancing around the tangled mess of spaghetti, only to find that the functionality that you implemented already existed somewhere else in the code base but was hiding out in a deep, dark corner that you never even knew was there until you had to fix some other broken feature months later and happened to stumble across it.

Consistency means predictability, and predictability means discoverability and, more importantly, easier changes and higher confidence in those changes.

Cleverness is a Fallacy

In any given project, it can be tempting to do something that saves you extra lines of code, or saves on CPU cycles, or just looks awesome and does something nobody would have thought of before. As human beings and especially as craftsmen, we like to leave our mark and take pride in breaking the status quo by taking a novel and interesting approach to a problem. It can make us feel fulfilled in our work, that we've done something unique, a trademark of sorts.

The problem with that is that it directly conflicts with the aforementioned consistency and predictability. What ends up being an engineering wonder to you ends up being an engineering nightmare to someone else. While you're enjoying the houses you build with wall studs arranged in the shape of a spider's web, the home remodelers who come along later aren't even sure if they can change part of the structure without causing the entire wall to collapse, and they're not even sure which walls are load-bearing and which aren't, so they're basically playing Jenga while blindfolded.

The code base I maintained had a few such gems, with what looked like load-bearing walls but were actually made of papier-mâché and were only decorative in nature, and the occasional spider's web wall studs. One spider's web comes to mind in particular. It's been a while since I've worked on that piece of code, so I can't recall what exactly it did, but two query-constructing pieces of logic had overlapping query structure with the difference being the operators and data. Rather than being smart and allowing those two constructs to be different, however, my predecessor decided to be clever and the query construction was abstracted into a separate method so that the same general query structure could be used in other places (note: it never was, and was only ever used in those two instances). It was abstracted so that all original context was lost and no comments existed to explain any of it. On top of that, the method was being called from the most critical piece of the system which, unfortunately, was already a convoluted mess and desperately required a rewrite and thus required me to understand what the hell that method was even doing (incidentally, I fell in love with whiteboards as a result).

When you feel like you're being clever, you should always stop what you're doing and make sure that what you're doing isn't actually a really terrible idea. Cleverness doesn't exist. Knowledge and intelligence do. Write intelligent code, not clever code.

Good Code Takes Time

Bad code more often than not is the result of impatience. We don't like to plan out the solution before we get to writing code. We like to use variables like x and temp in order to quickly achieve functional correctness of our code because stopping to think about how to name them is just additional overhead getting in the way. We don't like to scrap our bad work if we can salvage it in some way instead, because then we have to start from scratch and that's daunting. We continually work against ourselves and gradually increase our mental overhead because we try to decrease our mental overhead. As a result we find ourselves too exhausted by the end of our initial implementations to concern ourselves with fixing obvious problems. Obviously bad but functional code is preferable because we just want the task to be done and over with.

The more you get exposed to bad code and the more you try to avoid pushing that hell onto yourself and your successors, the more you realize that you need to spend less time coding and more time researching and planning. Whereas you may have been spending upwards of 50% of your time coding previously, suddenly you find yourself spending as little as 10% of your time writing any code at all.

Professionals from just about any field can tell you that you can either do something right or you can do it twice. You might recognize this most easily in the age-old piece of woodworking wisdom, "measure twice, cut once". The same is true of code, and doing something right means planning how to do it right in the first place before you've even started on the job.

Putting into Practice

I've been fortunate over the last couple of months to be able to start on a brand new project and architect it in a way that I see fit. Changes which would ordinarily take days or weeks in the old code base now take me half a day at most, and a matter of minutes at best. I remember where to find a piece of code that I need because I'm consistent and predictable about where I place things; I don't struggle to tell where something begins and where it ends because I'm consistent about structure; I don't continually hate myself when I need to make changes to my code because I don't do anything wildly out of the ordinary; and most importantly, I take my time to figure out what it is that I need to do and how I want to do it before I've written a single line of code.

When I needed to add a web portal interface for uploading a media asset to associate with a database object, the initial implementation took me a week, due to the need for planning, adding the interface, and supporting and debugging the asset management. When I needed to extended that interface to allow for uploading the same kinds of assets for a completely different object type, it took me only half an hour, with most of that time being dedicated toward updating a Vue.js component to accept configuration via props rather than working for only the single hard-coded object type. If I need to add a case for any additional object type, it will take me only five minutes.

That initial week of work for the web interface provided me with cost savings that would not have been feasible otherwise, and that initial week of work would have taken as many as three weeks had I not structured the API to be as consistent as it is now. Every initial lag in implementation is offset heavily by the long-term cost savings of writing good code.

Technical Debt

Technical debt is the cost of your code over time. The messier and worse your code gets, the more it costs you to try to change, and those costs only build up. Even good code can accumulate technical debt if the needs for your software have changed and its current architecture isn't compatible with those changes.

No project is without technical debt. Even my own code, that I've been painstakingly working on for the last couple of months, has technical debt. Odds are a programmer far more experienced than I am will come along and want to scrap everything I've done, and will do a far better job rewriting it.

That's okay, though. In fact, a certain amount of technical debt is good. If we try to never write any bad code whatsoever, then we could never possibly get to writing any code at all, because there are far too many unknowns for a new project.

What's important is knowing when to pay down on that technical debt, which could mean anything from paying it up front (i.e. through planning ahead of time) to paying it down when it starts to get too expensive (e.g. refactoring a complicated section of code when changes become sufficiently difficult). That's not something you can learn through a StackOverflow post or a college lecture, and certainly not from some unknown stranger on some relatively unknown website in a long, informal blog-like post.

Final Thoughts

I'm far from being a great programmer. There's a lot that I don't know and I still have quite a bit to learn. I love programming, though, and more than that I enjoy sharing the lessons I've learned with others. Especially the ones that I wish I'd learned back in college.

Please feel free to share your own experiences, learned lessons, and (if you have it) feedback here. I'd love to read up on some other thoughts on this subject!

What are you reading currently? Fiction or non-fiction, any genre, any language! Tell us what you're reading, and talk a bit about.

Edit: I have two "votes" currently, including mine, for the questions below. Currently I have 2 votes for bi-weekly, two for on Fridays, and the other voter has agreed that I keep making these posts. So, I've scheduled the next "What are you reading this week?" discussion for the 14th Sep Fri.

P.S.: This is the first instance of what I want to make a weekly recurring topic. I've asked here yesterday whether would people like it, and because that suggestion was supported w/ upvotes and comments, I decided to go ahead and start doing this. Because this is the first such topic, I'd be glad if you could answer these questions too: (1) weekly, biweekly or monthly; (2) on fridays or on mondays; (3) who should post these topics, me, or someone else? Any suggestions and objections are welcome!

My intention is that I post this topic every Friday from now on, with these contents (w/o the postcriptum here), and usually start it out with a comment on what I'm reading. IDK if the discussion on moderators is concluded and what sort of a decision has been made, but in any way if you think someone other than me would be a better fit for doing this, please tell me.

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something!

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

Hey! We're on week 11, and it's time for another classic record discussion: Godspeed You! Black Emperor's Lift Yr. Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven!

Here's the place to discuss your thoughts on the record, your history with it or the artist, and basically talk about whatever you want to that goes along with Lift Yr. Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven! Remember that this is intended to be a slow moving thing, feel free to take your time and comment at any point in the week!

If you'd like to stream or buy the album, it can be found on most platforms here.

Don't forget to nominate and vote for next week's obscure record in response to this comment!

It's Monday again, and that means it's time for Movie Monday, a thread where anyone and everyone is welcome to post a movie review about films that they've seen recently, or just liked or disliked in the past.

If you're wanting to post a review, I'd suggest reading trough Movie Monday: week 1 to read through the rules and what to write, but for the most part I'm trying to keep this as simple as possible.

The two rules that I do have are: So far, the only rules are:

All top level comments should be reviews. (if you have any questions or suggestions on how to do things differently, either send me a private message or post in the discussion thread I linked up above)

No spoilers in top level comments. Ideally any spoilers should be in children comments (with sufficient warning) if you wish to write a review with spoilers, make another comment below your top level comment and write the spoilers there. Anyone who doesn't want to know any spoilers should un-expand the comments at the top before they start reading comments. Hopefully this should allow discussion of both the film and the review without forcing people to see spoilers.

But other than that, happy Movie watching and have a great Monday :)

We now have the opportunity to continue our 100-word writing prompt fun :)

@Kat, the initiator of this writing club, nominated me as her successor as this round's topic keeper (or if we allow some fantasy, the "queen of stories", as in the Decameron). I'm very happy, honoured, nervous ... and so eager to read your contributions!

As a reminder of the rules, let us make the written piece exactly 100 words. Next weekend, I'll pass the garland to one of the writers, and they'll become the monarch of stories, bring to us a new topic.

This week's prompt is in the title:

I can see [them], but [they] cannot see me.

Here the pronoun they, in the brackets, is a generic one. It can be anyone, anything, or ... let us know :)

note: title subject to change

A few days ago I asked this question and got a few replies, so I figure this idea is worth trying out. If there's enough interest I'll probably move the day that this gets posted to something more regular for the week like Friday/Saturday/Sunday, but I figured I could make this one and gauge interest for the week.

Anyway, what have you been watching/reading this week?

Feel free to talk about something you saw that was cool, something that was bad, ask for recommendations, or anything else you can think of.

If you want to, feel free to find the thing you're talking about and link to its Anilist, MAL, or any other anime/manga database you use!

Hi, I'm filling in for @Whom, since she told me she wouldn't be around to post this and asked that I make sure to post it.

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something!

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something!

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

So since I'm a terrible person and all that I totally forgot to make this post last week so I've decided to wait a week and actually post on a Monday. For those of you that don't know what Movie Monday is, here is the post I made about it.

Basically I'd like to make a weekly post where myself and other users post comments on what movies they've watched recently and whether or not they recommend it etc. There's no specific format set out for the reviews, so feel free to write one any way you like, whether it's just a few sentences or a whole essay, we'll figure out what works best as we go along.

So far, the only rules are:

1. All top level comments should be reviews. (if you have any questions or suggestions on how to do things differently, either send me a private message or post in the discussion thread I linked up above)

2. No spoilers in top level comments. Ideally any spoilers should be in children comments (with sufficient warning) if you wish to write a review with spoilers, make another comment below your top level comment and write the spoilers there. Anyone who doesn't want to know any spoilers should un-expand the comments at the top before they start reading comments. Hopefully this should allow discussion of both the film and the review without forcing people to see spoilers.

I know the second rule is a tiny bit confusing, but like I said this is a learning process and we'll see what happens. Anyway have fun and happy film watching!

Hello all you good people, we made it to week 10! Here we've got this week's user-voted record: ▣世界から解放され▣ by ░▒▓新しいデラックスライフ▓▒░ !

From @Cleb:

Internet Club takes a bizarre set of samples consisting of things from Dragon Ball to some random Japanese radio show and turns them into a glitchy, repetitive vaporwave project that sounds just a little bit unhinged.

Here's the place to discuss your thoughts on the record, your history with it or the artist, and basically talk about whatever you want to that goes along with ▣世界から解放され▣. Remember that this is intended to be a slow moving thing, feel free to take your time and comment at any point in the week!

If you'd like to stream or buy the album, it can be found on YouTube or bought on Bandcamp.

Sup yall, we're here in week 9! It's time for another classic record discussion: Kraftwerk's The Man Machine! (or Die Mensch-Maschine)

Here's the place to discuss your thoughts on the record, your history with it or the artist, and basically talk about whatever you want to that goes along with The Man Machine. Remember that this is intended to be a slow moving thing, feel free to take your time and comment at any point in the week!

If you'd like to stream or buy the album, it can be found on most platforms here.

Don't forget to nominate and vote for next week's obscure record in response to this comment! Feel free to do something fun, dumb, or special in celebration of our tenth week!

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something!

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something!

Feel free to give recs or dicuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Hello all you good people, week 8 it is! Here we've got this week's user-voted record: Exuma by Exuma!

Taking @leech's original pitch:

I think it's probably one of the most legendary spiritual albums recorded, a look into some Junkanoo, Carnival, and Calypso music with a raw, ecstatic energy behind each song. His music is truly unique and nothing has quite reached it.
The story of Exuma's music is really captivating and later on in his career he toured with some big names

Here's the place to discuss your thoughts on the record, your history with it or the artist, and basically talk about whatever you want to that goes along with Exuma. Remember that this is intended to be a slow moving thing, feel free to take your time and comment at any point in the week!

If you'd like to stream or buy the album, it can be found on YouTube here or purchased physically here.

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something!

Feel free to give recs or dicuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Hi folks, sorry for the late post. @Whom is sick and wasn't able to post this today so she asked me to do it.

Hello all you good people, here we are in week number 7! It's time for another classic record discussion: Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited!

Here's the place to discuss your thoughts on the record, your history with it or the artist, and basically talk about whatever you want to that goes along with Highway 61 Revisited. Remember that this is intended to be a slow moving thing, feel free to take your time and comment at any point in the week!

If you'd like to stream or buy the album, it can be found on most platforms here.

Don't forget to nominate and vote for next week's obscure record in response to this comment!

Welcome to week four! This week we focus on another user-voted record: Weather Systems by Anathema.

Puling @deciduous' original pitch :

Weather Systems is an interesting album to me because it is both immediately catchy, but also very dense. It was specifically created to be an emotional experience that required engagement by the listener and bot does it deliver on that front. Each song flows well into the next and has a different a unique emotional resonance. "Lightning Song" is intense in a way few other songs are and "The Beginning and the End" is one of my favorite tracks ever for its fantastic piano riff that carries throughout the song. If you're at all into post or prog rock, this album is perfect for you.

Here's the place to discuss your thoughts on the record, your history with it or the band, and basically talk about whatever you want to that goes along with Weather Systems. Remember that this is intended to be a slow moving thing, feel free to take your time and listen / comment at any point in the week!

If you'd like to stream or buy the album, it can be found on most platforms here.

Week six it is! This week we focus on another user-voted record: Postcards by Meadowlark.

Pulling @Gyrfalcon's original nomination:

I'm going to suggest Postcards by Meadowlark again. I'm not great at describing why music is good, so I will just leave the music video of the title track.

Here's the place to discuss your thoughts on the record, your history with it or the band, and basically talk about whatever you want to that goes along with Postcards. Remember that this is intended to be a slow moving thing, feel free to take your time and listen / comment at any point in the week!

If you'd like to stream or buy the album, it can be found on most platforms here.

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something!

Feel free to give recs or dicuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Hi everyone, glad to see you here in week number 5! It's time for another classic record discussion: John Coltrane's A Love Supreme!

Here's the place to discuss your thoughts on the record, your history with it or the artist, and basically talk about whatever you want to that goes along with A Love Supreme. Remember that this is intended to be a slow moving thing, feel free to take your time and comment at any point in the week!

If you'd like to stream or buy the album, it can be found on most platforms here.

Don't forget to nominate and vote for next week's obscure record in response to this comment!

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something!

Feel free to give recs or dicuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something!

Feel free to give recs or dicuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Week three, everyone! Last week's obscure record pick went well, and here we are with another classic record discussion: Wu-Tang Clan's Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)!

Here's the place to discuss your thoughts on the record, your history with it or the artist, and basically talk about whatever you want to that goes along with 36 Chambers. Remember that this is intended to be a slow moving thing, feel free to take your time and comment at any point in the week!

If you'd like to stream or buy the album, it can be found on most platforms here.

Don't forget to nominate and vote for next week's obscure record in response to this comment!

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something!

Feel free to give recs or dicuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

The second week of our listening club is here already! This week we focus on our first user-voted obscure record: Dancing Time, the Best of Eastern Nigeria's Afro Rock Exponents 1973-77.

Here is the pitch given by @arghdos :

I'll nominate The Funkees': Dancing Time. This is some of the best afro-funk that has made it's way to the west. Bandcamp had a great feature on the Funkees a few years ago, they started as a band right at the end of the Nigerian civil war, and became defining proponents of Nigerian funk (along with the Hykkers, BLO, etc.) in the shadow the the giant in the room (i.e., Fela). They were much more influenced by sounds like James Brown and Santana (e.g., check out this ridiculously good cover of War's Slippin' Into Darkness), and present an entirely different side of mid-70's Nigerian music. In 1973, they moved to London and released two albums under John Peel before disbanding under internal strife in 1977. This album collects all their released Nigerian 45's with the best of the London recorded material.

Here's the place to discuss your thoughts on the record, your history with it or the band, and basically talk about whatever you want to that goes along with Dancing Time. Remember that this is intended to be a slow moving thing, feel free to take your time and comment at any point in the week!

If you'd like to stream or buy the album, it can be found on most platforms here.

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something!

Feel free to give recs or dicuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

These have been fairly popular and I really like hearing from the community, so here's this week's thread.

I've been playing Golf Story for the Switch (got it on recent sale). I've found it relaxing and amusing, a good combo for evening wind-down. I'm not sure if I mastered the mechanics yet, putting is surprisingly hard when you can't see the slope in 3D. Story is fun, and the variety in courses is refreshing, highly recommended.

Just purchased Football Manager 2018. I'm not actually a football fan or anything, I just really like the RPG-like nature of assembling a good team and seeing my amateur tactics play out on the field. Games can be surprisingly tense and exciting. I wish I had a deeper understanding of the game, but it's fun enough regardless.

Since it doesn't look like @basicbaconbitch is around (or they just intended it to be a one-time thing), I guess I'll post this!

What have you been reading? What do you think of it? No need to do a big review if you don't feel like it, but I think we'd all love to hear your thoughts! Recs or discussion of each others' reading habits is encouraged!

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Quick question: Do we want regular threads like these? Personally I think ~books is lacking a place to just drop in and talk about something that isn't news or a specific discussion topic, but maybe I'm alone on that.

Here it is, the first album of our listening club: OK Computer by Radiohead. This is the first of the odd week classic-focused posts, and you get get further details on this project here. I'll stop spamming ~music with posts about this now, we'll only have one a week from here on out.

Here's the place to discuss your thoughts on the record, your history with it or the band, and basically talk about whatever you want to that goes along with OK Computer. Remember that this is intended to be a slow moving thing, feel free to take your time and comment at any point in the week!

If you'd like to stream the album, it can be found on most streaming platforms here.

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Vote on next week's album here, we currently have a 7 way tie that needs to be broken!

Hey ~ers, I'd like to keep a weekly discussion going on this topic (every Wednesday or so?). Let me know if this isn't something you want to see in the future, I always liked these, but maybe not everyone does? Last one got a lot of interesting posts, let's see how it goes this time!

I've been playing Grim Dawn quite a bit lately. I've kickstarted it back in the day, but never got around to really playing it after the early access period. I was burned out on Diablo clones at the time: Torchlight 2, Victor Vran, Van Helsing, etc. I think the break did me good, as playing it fresh is quite enjoyable. There's a good variety of classes and builds, fun abilities, and tons of gear number crunching (playing thunder smashing shaman now). Just the way I like it! I'm hoping to snag one of the DLCs once I reach a high enough level and play with my friends on one of the unlocked hardcore difficulties.

Alright, so in the ideas thread, several of you expressed that you'd like / it would be more active if we went for a listening club that goes for something more general. As I think ~music is in a bit of a rough spot right now and needs a little more to bind it together, I'm going to try and have a bit of a hybrid solution that can hopefully be interesting for a lot of us.

Again, the idea is to come together and listen to the same record each week, discussing our thoughts on that album over the course of that week in these threads. For now, let's make our goal to build a community and become familiar with the thoughts, tastes, and musical histories of each other!

For every odd numbered week, we will listen to an acclaimed or important album of some kind that will hopefully have far-reaching appeal. I'm going to exercise my own judgement in picking these out of the qualifying albums, but expect them to be the OK Computers, A Love Supremes, and Illmatics of the world. If and when we reach a point where we've exhausted too many of these classics, we can restructure or retire this listening club.

For every even numbered week, we will listen to a more obscure record as voted on by the participants of the thread. For an initial guide, as stolen from @Eva, we will define "obscure" simply as not being certified Gold (or anything higher, of course). This is of course a very loose definition of the term, but it's at least a concrete starting place. As ~ gives us a raw vote count, we will do this through voting on comments. All nominations must be made as a reply to my top level comment. Everything else will be ignored, and this will help keep things organized once this voting occurs on a thread that's dedicated to its own week's record. If it becomes necessary, we can vote on an external platform.

I'm open to suggestions on how to change this process, but let's try to run it like this for a little bit. I don't want to get caught in that loop where you have so many tweaks and find so many flaws that you don't end up doing anything at all.

The first thread will be posted tomorrow (Thursday the 21st here) and will continue on from there weekly.

When we start our first record, feel free to listen, comment, and vote throughout the week. ~ gives us an opportunity to bump things and keep discussion going for a bit longer than Reddit, so let's take advantage of that where we can.