It is the last Wednesday of January and the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and ST. Paul have been experiencing very cold weather. It is being referred to as a polar vortex. Yesterday in the evening news the weatherman mentioned that our temperature was lower than in the South Pole. One way or another, the thermometer currently reads -29F. We expect even lower temperatures tomorrow reaching -35F. Hopefully the forecast will be amended today. Continue reading “C++ Tidbits – Exceptions”
Month: January 2019
C++ Tidbits – Generic Programming
What is generic programming? In a nutshell is a mechanism that allows the programmer to delay the data type used in a class / method to run time. If my vague description is not enough you could check here.
The main practical reason for generic programming is to avoid duplication. For example one may have a method or class that would need to be duplicated when using different data types. That grows the code base and may be prone to mistakes after copying and editing. Continue reading “C++ Tidbits – Generic Programming”
Neural Networks and Deep Learning Course
Towards the end of last year I started taking the Coursera course “Neural Networks and Deep Learning” taught by Andrew Ng. In a nutshell the course was great. I highly recommend it. That said; I ran into an issue with time. Allow me to explain and how I am addressing it. When done reviewing, will take the next course in the series. Continue reading “Neural Networks and Deep Learning Course”
What Should My Next Career Move Be?
It is another Sunday morning in winter in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Something is going on with the weather. Today the highs will be around 32F. In addition you can see green grass in many lawns. I was talking with my son who lives in Indiana and he mentioned that yesterday they woke up to several inches of fresh snow. He was going with his family to a Vivaldi concert in Cincinnati and hoping that the roads would cooperate. In contrast, the roads in my neck of the woods are perfectly clean. My wife and I will be leaving shortly for a walk in the Mall of America. Stores open at 11:00 AM so if we get there no later than 09:00 AM we should have plenty of time to feed my Fitbit five miles or more, get a bite and head back home. Continue reading “What Should My Next Career Move Be?”
Binary Tree – Heap
I read an article or two from Medium every day. A few days ago I read “Binary Trees: The Heap” by David Pynes. The idea behind a binary tree or heap is to be able to associate values with associated priorities. For example, assume you are in line at an emergency room in a hospital. When you arrive and register the facility may use a plain queue (FIFO) to wait for a physician. What happens if a patient in worse condition that you arrives later. The logical thing would be to allow them to see a physician before patients that are less ill. Continue reading “Binary Tree – Heap”
C++ Tidbits – Polymorphism
Good morning. It is a relatively cold Saturday in the Twin Cities. For some reason, this winter season has been warmer than usual with very little snow coverage. For example, today the high temperature will be around the freezing point. Some people (like me) like it while others hate it. There is no way to please everyone at once.
In an attempt to review in a systematic way some features of C++ I will be experimenting with polymorphism. In programming languages and type theory, polymorphism is the provision of a single interface to entities of different types or the use of a single symbol to represent multiple different types. To read more about it you may refer here.
C++ Tidbits – Inheritance
I am about to complete a course on Neural Networks and Deep Learning. I am amazed at how one gets absorbed into the subject and language (in this case Python). Lately when I am working with C, C++, Java or Python I occasionally use a syntax from a different language.
In this post I will be covering / reviewing Inheritance using C++. Many years ago when I wanted to review C I would pull from my bookshelf the book “C Programming Language” by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie. During the years I have owned several copies. A few minutes ago I tried to locate my latest copy, but it seems that it grew legs and walked away. For C++ I have … (I guess I have also misplaced it) a book by Bjarne Stroustrup. Given the fact that I want a quick refresher, decided to go over an Advanced C++ Programming course by Mike McMillan. For this post (and a few more that I will write in the next few days) I am using this course as a guide and will be coding C++ on Visual Studio 2017 from Microsoft. Continue reading “C++ Tidbits – Inheritance”
Sub Strings
The end of year 2018 holiday season has come to a conclusion. This past year it seemed to be quite long. Probably because of the day in which Christmas and New Year landed. One way or the other, on Monday January 07, 2019 most people will be at work or at school.
As usual I spend some time every week taking a coding challenge. In my opinion they do little to determine if a person is capable of working as a software developer, group lead or system architect. Being able to come up with a good approach to solve a problem in an hour or so using tools you are not familiar with does not seem to be a logical approach to determine fitness for a company. The reason these challenges have become popular is due to the fact that they are encapsulated. You get a challenge, you complete it in the allotted time, and you should be able to solve any other problem. We humans are quite complex. Having excelled in school, sports, worked for a few companies and having owned my own, and studying every day for a couple hours, gives me a good insight on how and what needs to be done to achieve success in the software life cycle. Continue reading “Sub Strings”
Distance Between Nodes in a BST
I was looking at several articles on binary trees and thought it would be a good opportunity to write some Java code in order to refresh knowledge of binary trees, in particular with BSTs (Binary Search Trees). You never know what new things are out there.
I am not sure if most system architects and software developers run into the same situation as I do. I have learned and worked with many data structures and programming languages. I do not work with every single data structure often enough that I recall how to implement or use it as far as all the associated methods and functions. I have a reasonable understanding of most data structures and I can get back on the horse rather quickly. Continue reading “Distance Between Nodes in a BST”