Sheon Han

[a-z]*

Selected Writing

Here are pieces that are either my personal favorites or have been well-received.
(Click here to see more of my published work.)


Ideas, Criticism, Essays

Talk Therapy: A tribute to the Longform podcast — The Point
On the end of the great Longform podcast.

When Literature Meets Philosophy — On Philosophical Science Fiction — The New Republic
A review of Philosophy Through Science Fiction Stories in praise of philosophical science fiction.

Steven Yeun’s Perfect Accent in “Minari” — The New Yorker
On the film “Minari” and the experience of living as a non-native speaker in America.

The Magic of Tiny-Home VideosThe New York Times Magazine
About my year of watching tiny-home videos on YouTube.

AI in Cinema & “Her” — The Verge
Sci-fi films are bad at depicting AI but Spike Jonze’s “Her” shows how it should be done.

The Hypocrisy of Judging Those Who Become More Beautiful — WIRED
About lookism and the immorality of disparaging people who “artificially” enhance their beauty (e.g., leg-lengthening surgery or plastic surgery).

A Reading List on Why We Run — Longreads
An essay and commentaries on six pieces of writings on running.

A Tale of Two Clubs — Nassau Weekly
On Princeton’s eating clubs: Ivy and Terrace.


Technology, Science, Math

Inside the Cult of the Haskell Programmer — WIRED
On Haskell — a cult classic of programming languages.

JavaScript Runs the World—Maybe Even Literally — WIRED
A defense of JavaScript — a silly-ass language that everyone loves to hate but more powerful (and egalitarian) than you think!

What We Lost When Twitter Became X — The New Yorker
About my time at the bird app and what the future might hold.

The Case for Software Criticism — WIRED
Why isn’t there “software criticism” like there is film criticism or book criticism? Software may be the defining cultural artifact of our time. So why isn’t there a culture of critical analysis around it?

How Google Docs Proved the Power of Less — WIRED
A piece of software criticism on Google Docs.

The Hidden History of Screen Readers — The Verge
On blind programmers who have, for decades, created screen readers for the visually impaired community.

How Manuel Blum—a Turing Award winner—became a legendary PhD advisor — MIT Technology Review
A profile of Turing Award-winning theoretical computer scientist Manuel Blum, who is also known as the greatest PhD advisor in the field. On what makes a great teacher who produces extraordinary scholars.

How to Write Software With Mathematical Perfection — Quanta Magazine
Q&A with the Turing Award winner Leslie Lamport on distributed systems (e.g., Paxos consensus protocol, Byzantine faults), computer science education, formal verification, and LaTeX.