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Many top notch computer science researchers and research groups) maintain active blogs that keep us updated on the latest research in the authors' fields of interest. In most cases, blog posts are easier to understand than formal papers, because they omit most of the gory technical details and emphasize intuition (which papers generally omit).

Thus, it would be useful to have a list of recommended blogs, in the same spirit as other lists of recommended resources:

Of course one can follow the excellent Theory of Computing Blog Aggregator, but that list is rather overwhelming, especially for beginners.

Please highlight why you recommend them.

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    $\begingroup$ really like the (T)CS expert blogs too & regard them as useful/ valuable/ colorful/ lively/ informal public/ community resource, some are even associated with CS societies, research centers/corps (team edited), etc. there is a great high quality running feed known to insiders & maintained by Narayanan incl several (high rep) tcs.se users. but re "should", following them is more an optional choice. $\endgroup$
    – vzn
    Commented Apr 19, 2014 at 15:55
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    $\begingroup$ Another great list can be "built" merging the entries of the "Blog List" on Lance Fortnow's blog and the entries of the "Blog Roll" on Lipton's blog $\endgroup$
    – Marzio De Biasi
    Commented Apr 19, 2014 at 21:13
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    $\begingroup$ @Bagaria, we don't do popularity contests on cstheory, see the meta discussion about the list of conferences question. Look at the blogs on Theory of Computing Blog Aggregator and see which one you like. $\endgroup$
    – Kaveh
    Commented Apr 20, 2014 at 17:12
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    $\begingroup$ Edited to mirror earlier "What ice cream should everyone eat?" questions. $\endgroup$
    – Jeffε
    Commented Apr 20, 2014 at 19:05
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    $\begingroup$ I don't think TCS blogs are that specialized though. I know I talk about all kinds of topics on mine, and so do Lipton/Regan and Fortnow/Gasarch. There are a few specialized blogs like the polylog blog for streaming, but generally speaking it's just easier to subscribe to the feed. $\endgroup$
    – Suresh Venkat
    Commented Apr 20, 2014 at 19:05

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It might come as no surprise, but there is a substantial overlap between cstheory Q&A power-users and the blogosphere. We even had a dedicated blog for a while, with some great posts but it fell into disuse. However, I thought I would list some of the blogs run by our top 38 users that have had new posts since 2012:

  • David Eppstein's 0xDE: graph-theory and algorithms.
  • Suresh Venkatasubramanian's The Geomblog: computational geometry, algorithms, and discussions of academic life.
  • Jeff Erickson's Ernie's 3D Pancakes: computational topology, and community announcements.
  • Neel Krishnaswami's Semantic Domain: programming languages, logic, and formal languages.
  • Joe Fitzsimons's Quantized Thoughts: quantum information and computation, theoretical physics, and community building.
  • Andrej Bauer's Mathematics and Computation: HoTT, logic, category theory, and philosophy of math.
  • András Salamon's Constraints: computational complexity through the lens of constraint satisfaction.
  • Marzio De Biasi's ... nearly 42 ...: computational complexity highlighted through NP-completeness and puzzles.
  • Scott Aaronson's Shtetl-Optimized: computational complexity, with a primary focus on quantum computing, philosophy, humour, and community building.
  • Lev Reyzin's Room for Doubt: theory and practice of machine learning, and academic life.
  • Noam Nisan's Turing's Invisible Hand: computational economics, algorithmic game theory, and community building.
  • Sariel Har-Peled's Vanity of Vanities, all is Vanity: computational geometry, and general social and academic commentary.
  • Shiva Kintali's My Brain is Open: computational complexity, polyhedral combinatorics, algorithms, and graph theory.
  • Artem Kaznatcheev's Theory, Evolution, and Games Group: evolutionary game theory, and algorithmic lens on evolution, learning and philosophy.
  • Hsien-Chih Chang's Finite Playground: bilingual blog on computational complexity, formal languages, and concrete math.
  • Aaron Sterling's Nanoexplanations: distributed computing, chemoinformatics, and general social commentary.
  • Lance Fortnow and Bill Gasarch's Computational Complexity : Computational Complexity and other fun stuff in math and computer science.
  • Emanuele Viola's Thoughts: computational complexity and general commentary -- started Summer 2014.
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    $\begingroup$ Note, I specifically violated the one blog per post rule, to highlight one community -- ours. If I missed your blog, if you want to expand your blurb a bit (try to keep it to a sentence or so), or if your blog is no longer active (and you want to remove it) then please edit my post! $\endgroup$
    – Artem Kaznatcheev ♦
    Commented Apr 23, 2014 at 0:47
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    $\begingroup$ Jeff Erickson's blog isn't very active, but it's one of the first ones: 3dpancakes.typepad.com $\endgroup$
    – Suresh Venkat
    Commented Apr 23, 2014 at 2:27
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    $\begingroup$ One more possible site: The Windows On Theory blog at: windowsontheory.org. $\endgroup$
    – lgidwani
    Commented Jul 16, 2014 at 5:41
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It is not active anymore, but Mihai Patrascu's "WebDiarios de Motocicleta" blog is one of my all-time favorites. Highly recommended especially to those new to the TCS community.

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blog preferences tend to be highly personal in contrast to other sometimes-definitive TCS resources eg books. however there are two standout/ leading/ popular TCS blogs already cited, lively and highly active for many years, with some background/profiles. both blogs have extensive indexes to other leading TCS blogs. both experts/teachers/leaders in TCS with many published papers, and very much involved with promoting TCS to the wider community eg through popular books. note both have also joined/contributed to tcs.se. maybe not coincidentally (and in some contrast to this site) they do not shy away and are both quite keen on discussing key or famous open problems in the field eg P=?NP. blog comments are open and an interesting/diverse part of the blogs. they routinely cover important proofs in the field. Lipton was closely involved with the cyberspatial peer review of the Deolalikar attack years ago.

another well-read, leading/striking blog is Aaronsons "Shtetl optimized". Aaronson sometimes writes longer essays, quite passionately at times, and can sometimes be quite opinionated and polemical. comment sections are very lively and occasionally intense. a strong focus on quantum computing.

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  • $\begingroup$ addendum, recent Aaronson profile $\endgroup$
    – vzn
    Commented Apr 22, 2014 at 1:26
  • $\begingroup$ news, Fortnow wins SIGACT prize in part for blogging! he writes "At the just completed STOC conference I received the 2014 SIGACT Distinguished Service Prize. Part of this citation reads"His blog, and many others that followed, changes the way our field communicates, both with itself and with the outside world." I owe this award to you, my readers and commenters. May the conversations always continue." $\endgroup$
    – vzn
    Commented Jul 18, 2014 at 15:32
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One of my all time favorites for deep posts and amazing diversity of content is Neighborhood of Infinity. It mostly focuses on type and category theory and applications of Haskell, but the applications are always so creative and the explanations so clear that I find myself wanting to read it despite it not being my area of expertise.

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I recommend A CS Professor's Blog by Claire Mathieu. She has many interesting posts on academia and CS. A few articles under the label `TCS' have informal descriptions of technical results.

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    $\begingroup$ Just a note: this blog does not seem to be updated very frequently. $\endgroup$
    – Ryan Dougherty
    Commented Nov 20, 2014 at 3:20

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