Lets compare some Python to Haskell for solving the same problem.  The problem we’ll pick is Trie data-structure for auto-completions.  We are interested not so much in the nitty gritty of the algorithm, but in the language style itself.  Auto-complete has been in the programming news a lot recently; both a Python and a Haskell solver have turned up.(I suspect this post got flagged on Hacker News :(  It never got on the front-page despite the rapid upvoting on a no-news night)Here’s the Python:"""A fast data structure for searching strings with autocomplete su...

Here at Kendo UI, we have always encouraged you to give us feedback.  Whether it’s through our forums, or the Kendo UI User Voice site, what you think is important to us.  We take your thoughts very seriously.  We receive a lot of feature requests, enhancement requests and other various pieces of product feedback. One of the things that we heard loud and clear from our users was that our documentation could be better.  We took a good look at what we had, and we agree.  It can and should be better. Nothing is more important to you as a developer than to have the ...

Donald Knuth cleverly imprisoned the phrase "Literate Programming" - if you're not documenting your source with his particular methodology then you must be a proponent of "Illiterate Programming," which sounds truly awful.I very much believe in documented code but I think no amount of pontification in English will ever make a piece of code clearer than the code itself (I'm not talking about project or API documentation). I'm also not talking about the superficial notions / arguments of "readability" that are bandied about these days (Python, CoffeeScript, etc).Mos...

Programming is, without a doubt, the most mentally rewarding thing I've ever done. Programming taught me that life should be fun, filled with creativity, and lived to the fullest. Programming taught me that anything is possible; I can do anything I want using only my mind.Programming also taught me that learning is fun. It showed me that the more you know, the more power you have. Programming showed me that a life filled with learning is a life worth living. Programming revealed to me who I am inside, and has continuously helped me work towards my goals.I feel extremely lucky to have had the m...

Over the years, I've seen a bunch of coding anti-patterns.I figured maybe I'll share a few.Today, I'll introducewhat I'm calling the for-if anti-pattern,also known as"We'll sell you the whole seat, but you'll only need the edge."This is a special case of the for-case anti-pattern, whereall but one of the cases is null.for (int i = 0; i < 100; i++) { if (i == 42) { do_something(i); }}This can naturally be simplified todo_something(42);The for-if anti-pattern arises in many forms.For example:foreach (string filename in Directory.GetFiles(".")){ if (filename.Equals("desktop.ini", StringCom...

I love programming. I can truly say that of all the things I enjoy, I enjoy programming the most. There's nothing quite like the feeling you get when you create something. Writing code is a lot like building your own little universe.When you build stuff, you're in complete control, and, no matter how hard you fight it, your code directly reflects yourself. If you write sloppy code, I can almost guarantee you'll be a sloppy person. If you haphazardly throw code around with any care or passion, it's likely you treat yourself the same way.I tend to think of myself as a passionate programmer ...

Cory Doctorow's latest talk 'The Coming War on General Purpose Computing' really puts things in perspective about life in the 21st century. This got me thinking more about functional programming languages and how they are related to the intentional limitation/crippling of turing machines by industry and government.What if Stallman is right about the intentional efforts to limit freedom of information ? What if it's even worse than we all think it is ?In relation to functional languages : might industry and academia intentionally not want them to become popular ? At least not yet ?Might powerfu...

Here are some sequences of events:Take the rake out of the shed, use it to pile up the leaves in the backyard, then put the rake back in the shed.Fly to Seattle, see the sights, then fly home.Put the key in the door, open it, then take the key out of the door.Wake-up your phone, check the time, then put it back to sleep.See the pattern? You do something, then do something else, then you undo the first thing. Or more accurately, the last step is the inverse of the first. Once you're aware of this pattern, you'll see it everywhere. Pick up the cup, take a sip of coffee, put the cup down. And it'...