Show, Don't Tell

Seven Books, One Thread

The weave — how Cooper, Raymond, Nystrom, Pólya, Koza, Hofstadter, and Braitenberg are all saying the same thing.

SYNTHESIS

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Order Emerges from Process

Four books braided — Alexander, Cooper, Raymond, Koza. Rosetta Stone vocabulary switcher, live evolution simulator.

SYNTHESISINTERACTIVE

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Two Books Walk Into a Bar

Cooper vs Raymond — where they agree, where they fight, and what I think.

SYNTHESISINTERACTIVE

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The Inmates Are Running the Asylum

Alan Cooper's case against programmer-designed software. Timed ATM, dancing bear drag-and-drop, persona-driven stakeholder collapse.

READINTERACTIVEv1v2

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The Art of Unix Programming

Raymond's 17 rules, lived. Build pipelines, feel the Rule of Silence, break the Rule of Repair, vote on Worse Is Better.

READINTERACTIVEv1v2

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Crafting Interpreters ★★★★★

Build programming languages hands-on. Pratt parser visualizer, closure toy, NaN boxing bit-toggler, animated GC simulator.

READINTERACTIVEv1v2

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Secrets of the JS Ninja ★★★★☆

Resig's advanced JS. Live code editors: closures, prototypes, this binding, regex.

READINTERACTIVE

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The Little Schemer ★★★★★

Socratic Q&A from atoms to a metacircular evaluator. Working REPL, recursion tracer, Y combinator derivation.

READINTERACTIVE

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Gödel, Escher, Bach ★★★★★

Hofstadter's eternal golden braid. MIU puzzle, Strange Loop visualizer, Gödel numbering encoder, crab canon palindrome.

READINTERACTIVE

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Vehicles ★★★★★

Braitenberg's thought experiments. Build vehicles from sensors and motors, watch fear, aggression, and love emerge from simple circuits.

READINTERACTIVE

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How to Solve It ★★★★★

Pólya's heuristics. Four-problem workshop, Inventor's Paradox demo, branching teacher dialogue.

READINTERACTIVEv1v2

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Genetic Programming III ★★★★☆

Koza's machine that reinvents patented circuits. Fitness curves, crossover lab, Human vs GP challenge.

READINTERACTIVEv1v2

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The Information ★★★★★

Gleick's history of information theory. From African drums to Shannon entropy.

READINTERACTIVE

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Lateral Thinking ★★★★☆

De Bono's pattern-breaking toolkit. Puzzles that unstick your thinking.

READINTERACTIVE

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Psycho-Cybernetics ★★★★☆

Maltz's servo-mechanism model. Your brain as thermostat, mental rehearsal, feedback loops.

READINTERACTIVE

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Thinking, Fast and Slow ★★★★★

Kahneman's cognitive bias carnival. 7 experiments that trick your System 1.

READINTERACTIVE

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Make It Stick ★★★★½

You're the test subject. Retrieval practice, spacing, interleaving — experience the science.

READINTERACTIVE

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The Having of Wonderful Ideas ★★★★★

Duckworth on learning through discovery. Mystery boxes, straw puzzles, no instructions.

READINTERACTIVE

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A Mind for Numbers ★★★★☆

Oakley's brain gym. Pinball focused/diffuse modes, chunking, memory palace.

READINTERACTIVE

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Mindstorms ★★★★★

Papert's vision of children as builders. Turtle geometry, microworlds, Mathland.

READINTERACTIVE

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Teaching As a Subversive Activity ★★★★★

Postman & Weingartner's 1969 manifesto. Questions are the curriculum.

READINTERACTIVE

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Invisible Cities ★★★★★

Calvino's 55 cities as philosophical propositions. Memory, desire, signs, the dead.

READINTERACTIVE

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Steal Like an Artist ★★★☆☆

Kleon's creative permission slip. Charming gateway drug.

READINTERACTIVE

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The Timeless Way of Building ★★★★★

Alexander's living patterns. Compose buildings, watch 100 years of repair, find the Quality Without a Name.

READINTERACTIVE

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Dialogues of Plato ★★★★★

Socrates cross-examines you. Walk through the Cave. Climb the Ladder of Love.

READINTERACTIVE

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Interview Replay Viewer

Real Excalidraw rendering — see exactly what each model drew, stage by stage.

VIEWER

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Benchmark Results (v2)

11 models tested. Qwen3-VL-8B won. Full scoring breakdown and context overflow tracking.

BENCHMARK

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