It is a fun tradition, to write a shortest possible program on a Holiday.

It is a good reminder of how the entire world of programming, lays unexplored.

One day, people theorize about AI, the next Autocomplete becomes sentient.

The two nicest areas in my opinion are, Futuristic User Interfaces, and Visual Programming.

Visual programming is just packet based programming, where uniformly formatted packets such as User or NewsArticle...

Get sent through filters that sometimes remove a packet from the flow, where maybe it is a duplicate article.

Or most likely transform it, and maybe divide a singe stream of packets in two.

Freeloaders, and paid users, for example.

Once packets are filtered, transformed, split, enriched, they are plugged into a more complex action.

Such as, notify user, or archive article, or send email to each email address of every packet that arrives in sendmail action.

Visual programming languages are completely unexplored, there is just a few programs...

And all the new stuff, deals with, building overflows, which are just operating system scripts.

Futuristic User Interfaces, or as I like to call the Fantasy User Interfaces are all over computer games.

And your favorite Sci-Fi movies, but, they don't actually work, they are interactive screen-savers at best.

The major reason why common user interfaces don't look as flashy as in the movies, is that they eat up CPU, and slow everything down.

In fact a lot of movies will play a video made by an artist, rather than compute an actual interactive screen.

But here you just innovate, you rethink everything from scratch.

As you wait for the title indicator on the turkey, or more likely, yet again, program for too long, and get stuck with a kwiki-mart pizza.

Zoomable User Interfaces, as rare as fantasy user interfaces, inject details to windows as you zoom in to some area.

Rather than opening a window, you zoom in to the icon on the desktop, and it enhances into a web browser.

You can zoom into infinity, just traveling forward though zooming animation.

Liking on links is a broken approximation of that, when you click on links in the encyclopedia it is like zooming in on details.

But as you sip your pumpkin mocha, or an electrolyte drink that will dye your lips deep blue for the rest of the day.

You have the freedom, of putting the three together, A Visual Programming Language, intricately decorated in a futuristic user interface style.

But also made efficient, by means of Zoomable User Interfaces, where the CPU intensive details only show up as you zoom in closer to some part of the visual program.

Holiday programming can really help you invent new side projects, it becomes a little island or two of unique creativity,

But, because it is a one day event disconnected from daily research, it keeps your programs small, and your inventions smart and simple.

VPL, FUI, and the ZUI, you'll be hard pressed to find a better GUI.