Introduction to Python Fundamentals – Lesson 1

It is Thursday morning in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Even though we are still officially in summer, the highs and lows for the days are going down. Hopefully we will have at least two more months of decent weather to walk outside.

As I mentioned in the last posts, we are going to start solving problems in Python. According to the PYPL Index, for results collected in August 2021, the most popular programming language is Python with a share of 31.47%. Java is second with a 19.14% share.

According to the IEEE Spectrum article “Top Programming Languages 2021 Python dominates as the de facto platform for new technologies” Python is number 1. I guess it is time to start solving problems in Python. In our next post I will start solving easy problems. We will then progress to medium and hard.

As you might already know, I like to refresh on tools I will be using. I decided to start watching “Introduction to Python Fundamentals: Lesson 01” by Paul Deitel published by Pearson Education, Inc. Since I am a member of the ACM (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_for_Computing_Machinery) I have access to O’Reilly titles. If you work developing software, I strongly recommend you joining the ACM. They provide a wealth of information at your fingertips. For example, earlier today I attended the webinar “Quantum Computational Supremacy” by Scott Aaronson. I do not work with quantum computers, but enjoy learning about the technology. If you have a chance, watch the recording of the webinar which should be available in a few days.

Continue reading “Introduction to Python Fundamentals – Lesson 1”

Cipher

I was somewhat busy over the weekend. My wife and I were going to make some cannoli but for simplicity we decided to bake some chocolate cornetto. We are planning on making cannoli next weekend.

Last week I was reading the web page from Microsoft Dynamics 365 Connected Store. It uses video cameras and IoT devices to capture non-PII (Personally Identifiable Information) from customers that can be used by the store to improve service and increase sales. I spend time reading different related articles and watching YouTube videos. I am impressed with the approach to the subject by Microsoft. Most companies try to incorporate PII data but that may have many implications for the store, customer and the ability to offer the system to customers in different parts of the world due to local laws. I can go on and on but that would take us out of the topic for this post. Continue reading “Cipher”

Arrays Left Rotation

Last evening I read the article “Programmable Solid-State Storage in Future Cloud Datacenters” by Jaeyound Do, Sudipta Sengupta and Steven Swanson which appeared in volume 62 number 6 edition of Communications of the ACM. This morning I read it once again. As you might already know I am passionate about storage and have been working on it for a while. The article deal with SSD drives and how they can help improve performance by providing compute resources close to the data. Continue reading “Arrays Left Rotation”

Covariant Return Types

This morning I read the article Turing Award Won by 3 Pioneers in Artificial Intelligence by Cade Metz of the New York Times. The recipients are Yann LeCun, Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio. Continue reading “Covariant Return Types”

Fresh Start

acm_logoIt is a relatively cold morning in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Woke up earlier and spent time reading the latest issue of Communications of the ACM (10/2016 Volume 59 No 10). A short article titled Fresh Starts by Kate Matsudaira called my attention. Continue reading “Fresh Start”