Category Archives: Programming

Pharen

Posted on 2011-06-02 by jcs

I don’t know what to think of Pharen. It’s a little compiler that compiles a Lisp-like language into PHP. PHP seems to be almost as universally reviled as it is universally used, so perhaps this is a useful thing as … Continue reading →

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Expanding File Names in Guile

Posted on 2011-05-24 by jcs

I really like Guile but one very annoying thing about it is that it doesn’t expand file paths. If you want to load a file outside the current directory you have to specify the complete path. Emacs has a very … Continue reading →

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Boolean Functions

Posted on 2011-05-22 by jcs

Boolean functions are very simple. If B = {FALSE, TRUE } then a Boolean function of n variables has domain Bn and range B; that is f: Bn → B. This limits the number of possible functions. For example, there … Continue reading →

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Huffman Coding

Posted on 2011-05-21 by jcs

Over at Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger, Steven Pigeon has a nice post on Huffman codes. He explains how Huffman codes operate and works through a pencil and paper example. Because he doesn’t give a real implementation and because the usual … Continue reading →

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Heaps and Priority Queues

Posted on 2011-05-20 by jcs

In a previous post, I talked about FIFO queues and gave an implementation. Now I want to talk about another type of queue: the priority queue. In these queues every element has a priority and elements are removed from the … Continue reading →

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Magit

Posted on 2011-05-17 by jcs

One of the first things I did when I started using Emacs was to install the git.el package that interfaces with Git. I chose git.el because it worked the same as the rest of the Emacs source control interfaces. There’s … Continue reading →

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Mean!

Posted on 2011-05-16 by jcs

This is just mean. Mean, but funny. It’s also awe-inspiring in the same disturbing way that someone who memorizes the Boston phone directory is.

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Google Code University

Posted on 2011-05-16 by jcs

Recently, via Hacker News, I came across this link to Google Code University. The University consists of introductions to a variety of subject matter in software development and Web programming. Some are internal courses that Google uses to train their … Continue reading →

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Setting the Babel Evaluate Confirm Status

Posted on 2011-05-15 by jcs

Because Babel provides a facility to execute arbitrary code, it presents a security risk. Code blocks are evaluated when a document is exported as well as when a user explicitly asks for evaluation by typing C-c C-c in the block. … Continue reading →

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Fibonacci Run Times

Posted on 2011-05-14 by jcs

­ This posts combines the results of the last two posts. I thought it would be interesting to compare the actual run times of the three methods of calculating Fibonacci numbers so I put together a Babel table like the … Continue reading →

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