Computer Science
@CompSciFact
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Daily tweets about computer science and related stuff @JohnDCook .
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Q: Why can’t programmers tell the difference between Halloween and Christmas?
A: Because oct 31 = dec 25.
#oldprogrammerjoke
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Q: Why can't programmers tell the difference between Halloween and Christmas?
A: Because oct 31 = dec 25.
#oldiebutgoodie
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'The purpose of abstraction is not to be vague, but to create a new semantic level in which one can be absolutely precise' - Edsger Dijkstra
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Is any other sculpture so associated with a CS textbook?
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You might be a computer scientist if you think 1024 is a nice, round number.
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'The hardest problem in computer science is not being an opinionated jerk about everything.' --
@ntakayama
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RT
@KenScambler
: Legacy. Looks easy; should be done in half an hour I reckon.
http://t.co/XYjIzKtT71
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If you look very carefully, the title says "Numerical methods that usually work." The word "usually" is in light gray type. In the original hardback version, "usually" wasn't printed per se, but pressed into the cover while the other letters were colored silver.
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'Just because you've implemented something doesn't mean you understand it.' -- Brian Cantwell Smit
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'Unix is user-friendly; it's just picky about who its friends are.'
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"What if there isn’t actually any use for a distributed ledger at all?"
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'The idea that people knew a thing or two in the '70s is strange to a lot of young programmers.' -- Donald Knuth
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A Complete Guide to LLVM for Programming Language Creators
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Fallacies of distributed computing
1. The network is reliable.
2. Latency is zero.
3. Bandwidth is infinite.
4. The network is secure.
5. Topology doesn't change.
6. There is one administrator.
7. Transport cost is zero.
8. The network is homogeneous.
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John von Neumann invented merge sort in 1945. It requires O(n log n) comparisons.
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'Fancy algorithms are slow when n is small, and n is usually small.' -- Rob Pike
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'Learning to program teaches you how to think. Computer science is a liberal art.' -- Steve Jobs
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Why can't programmers tell Halloween from Christmas?
Because oct 31 = dec 25.
(The joke worked better when programmers were more accustomed to octal.)
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When you see a clever algorithm presented in a CS class in 20 minutes, it can be intimidating. You reasonably think "I could never come up with anything like that."
But the person who did come up with it spent more than 20 minutes thinking about it. Maybe months or years.
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'... the best programs are the ones written when the programmer is supposed to be working on something else.' -- Melinda Varian
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There's a new programming language, and now programming is going to be easy.
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'Unix is user-friendly; it's just picky about who its friends are.'
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Faster linear algebra using thermodynamics
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"Why does CS count from 0? Nobody does that."
How many years old are you during your first year of life?
At what age do you enter your second decade?
Are we in the 20th century or the 21st century?
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“If your config file syntax becomes Turing complete, stop now and cancel the project.” — J. B. Crawford
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RSA algorithm in a poem, by Daniel G. Treat.
Take two large prime numbers, q and p.
Find the product n, and the totient ϕ .
If e and ϕ have GCD one
and d is e's inverse, then you're done!
For sending m raised to the e
reduced mod n gives secre-c.
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A distributed system is one in which the failure of a computer you didn't even know existed can render your own computer unusable. - Lamport
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'One of my most productive days was throwing away 1000 lines of code.' -- Ken Thompson
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'Hardware eventually fails. Software eventually works.' -- Michael Hartung
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'The purpose of abstraction is not to be vague, but to create a new semantic level in which one can be absolutely precise' - Edsger Dijkstra
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'Hardware eventually fails. Software eventually works.' -- Michael Hartung
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Swap x and y without using a third variable.
x = x^y
y = y^x
x = x^y
where ^ is XOR.
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'The hardest problem in computer science is not being an opinionated jerk about everything.' --
@ntakayama
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'So much complexity in software comes from trying to make one thing do two things.' -- Ryan Singer
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Asking what is the best programming language is like asking what is the best chess move. Neither question has an answer without some context.
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'Fancy algorithms are slow when n is small, and n is usually small.' -- Rob Pike
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The day of your birth is your 0th birthday. It’s not just computer scientists who count from zero.
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'Learning to program teaches you how to think. Computer science is a liberal art.' -- Steve Jobs
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There's a new record for the largest known prime. Written in binary, it is a string of 77,232,917 ones.
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"If you don't run experiments before you start designing a new system, your entire system will be an experiment." -- Mike Williams
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'Unix is user-friendly; it's just picky about who its friends are.'
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Goodhart's law: When a metric becomes a target, it ceases to be a good metric.
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Objects are data with functions. Closures are functions with data.
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"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons." -- Popular Mechanics, 1949
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'Hardware eventually fails. Software eventually works.' -- Michael Hartung
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max(r, s) = (r + s + |r - s|)/2
min(r, s) = (r + s - |r - s|)/2
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'Thinking doesn't guarantee that we won't make mistakes. But not thinking guarantees that we will.' -- Leslie Lamport
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'The purpose of abstraction is not to be vague, but to create a new semantic level in which one can be absolutely precise' - Edsger Dijkstra
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That awkward moment when you realize you can't find the bug in your program because there isn't one. Your program is right but your expectations are wrong.
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'Unix is user-friendly; it's just picky about who its friends are.'
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C code to test whether an unsigned integer u > 0 is a power of 2:
(u & (u-1)) == 0
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Objects are data with functions. Closures are functions with data.
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'Programming languages teach you not to want what they don't provide.' -- Paul Graham
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Algebra, Topology, Differential Calculus, and Optimization Theory For Computer Science and Machine Learning
1,962 page PDF
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'Hardware eventually fails. Software eventually works.' -- Michael Hartung
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Computer scientist: "Unfortunately there's no known algorithm for solving this problem."
Cryptographer: "Cool!"
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'The idea that people knew a thing or two in the '70s is strange to a lot of young programmers.' -- Donald Knuth
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'Unix is user-friendly; it's just picky about who its friends are.'
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“An algorithm is a finite answer to an infinite number of questions.” — Stephen Kleene
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'The fastest algorithm can frequently be replaced by one that is almost as fast and much easier to understand.' -- Douglas W. Jones
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Seven design principles from Programming Pearls by Jon Bentley:
1. Work on the right problem.
2. Explore the design space of solutions.
3. Look at the data.
4. Use the back of the envelope.
5. Build prototypes.
6. Make trade-offs when you have to.
7. Keep it simple.
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mRNA vaccines are to traditional vaccines what JavaScript is to static HTML.
Instead of delivering a virus fragment, mRNA vaccines deliver code instructing your body to make virus fragments.
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'The purpose of abstraction is not to be vague, but to create a new semantic level in which one can be absolutely precise' - Edsger Dijkstra
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'Inside every large program is a small program trying to get out.' -- Tony Hoare
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Find the average of two unsigned integers without risking overflow:
(x & y) + ((x ^ y) >> 1)
Rounds down in the average isn’t an integer.
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'... the best programs are the ones written when the programmer is supposed to be working on something else.' -- Melinda Varian
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'If you lie to the compiler, it will get its revenge.' -- Henry Spencer
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“We already store data. In a database. It works well.”
Jimmy Wales in response to the suggestion that Wikipedia store data in a blockchain.
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"Programs that write programs are the happiest programs in the world."
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'No matter how slow you are writing clean code, you will always be slower if you make a mess.' -
@UncleBobMartin
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John von Neumann invented merge sort in 1945. It requires O(n log n) comparisons.
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'So much complexity in software comes from trying to make one thing do two things.' -- Ryan Singer
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'... the best programs are the ones written when the programmer is supposed to be working on something else.' -- Melinda Varian
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'The idea that people knew a thing or two in the '70s is strange to a lot of young programmers.' -- Donald Knuth
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"The idea that people knew a thing or two in the '70s is strange to a lot of young programmers." -- Donald Knuth
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'The purpose of abstraction is not to be vague, but to create a new semantic level in which one can be absolutely precise' - Edsger Dijkstra
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"Hardware eventually fails. Software eventually works." -- Michael Hartung
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'The purpose of abstraction is not to be vague, but to create a new semantic level in which one can be absolutely precise' - Edsger Dijkstra
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'Hardware eventually fails. Software eventually works.' -- Michael Hartung
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'... the best programs are the ones written when the programmer is supposed to be working on something else.' -- Melinda Varian
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There's a new prime record. Written in hex, it's a 1 followed by over 20 million F's.
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'The idea that people knew a thing or two in the '70s is strange to a lot of young programmers.' -- Donald Knuth
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"It's hard to do a really good job on anything you don't think about in the shower." -- Paul Graham
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'The purpose of abstraction is not to be vague, but to create a new semantic level in which one can be absolutely precise' - Edsger Dijkstra
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'Unix is user-friendly; it's just picky about who its friends are.'
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Learning a new programming language is easy compared to learning the new ecosystem that comes with it.
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'The purpose of abstraction is not to be vague, but to create a new semantic level in which one can be absolutely precise' - Edsger Dijkstra
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'The fastest algorithm can frequently be replaced by one that is almost as fast and much easier to understand.' -- Douglas W. Jones
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