Renowned tech essayist Joel Spolsky is editing a collection of the best software essays for 2004, and asked his readers for nominations. Many of the suggestions are worth reading. Whether they're worth anthologizing as the best of a genre, I'm not so sure. There are a bunch of great essays in the list, but only a few of them were actually written in the last year.

Several of renowned tech essayist, veteran tech writer and Lisp expert Paul Graham's recent writes were nominated, and since I can't seem to get far enough away from language evangelism these days, I've been re-reading his Lisp-is-the-bestest (and-to-a-lesser-extent-Python, in-as-much-as-it's-like-Lisp) stuff. The part where he says that Lisp macros are a defining feature links to Paul's 1993 book, On Lisp, which is now available as a free download (minus several diagrams lost to time and ether).

Re: Lisp goodness, see also responses and rebuttals to that Lisp/language essay, which clarifies some stuff and makes additional good points, including some more good points on Python, and links to Paul Prescod's response on Python and Peter Norvig's "Python for Lisp Programmers".