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SEARCH KEYWORD -- Impractical Programming



  Code Optimization Techniques for Graphics Processing Units

Books on parallel programming theory often talk about such weird beasts like the PRAM model, a hypothetical hardware that would provide the programmer with a number of processors that is proportional to the input size of the problem at hand. Modern general purpose computers afford only a few processing units; four is currently a reasonable number. This limitation makes the development of highly parallel applications quite difficult to the average computer user. However, the low cost and th...

   Optimazation,GUI,Graphic processing     2011-12-18 01:11:53

  The Go Programming Language Turns Two

Two years ago a small team at Google went public with their fledgling project - the Go Programming Language. They presented a language spec, two compilers, a modest standard library, some novel tools, and plenty of accurate (albeit succinct) documentation. They watched with excitement as programmers around the world began to play with Go. The team continued to iterate and improve on what they had built, and were gradually joined by dozens - and then hundreds - of programmers from the open source...

   Go,Google,Evolution,Development     2011-11-11 02:40:55

  Rust vs Go: how to choose the best programming language for your project?

Rust and Go, these two modern programming languages, with their unique advantages, are becoming hot topics in the developer community. Their competition in performance, security, simplicity, feature set, and concurrency not only influences developers' choices but also foretells future trends in software development. Battle of Performance: Rust's Precision vs. Go's Efficiency Rust, developed by Mozilla Research, has become the preferred choice for performance-sensitive applications due to its zer...

   RUST,GO,GOLANG,COMPARISON     2024-02-10 19:36:44

  How can I teach a bright person, with no programming experience, how to program?

I usually prescribe the same sequence for anyone who wants to learn programming. It's very theoretical, but it lays a good foundation. It should take three or four months of fulltime study, but programming isn't something you learn overnight.If you can't get through this sequence, you're not going to be able to program, so you might as well give up now.Code, by Charles Petzold.The C Programming Language, K&RThe Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, Abelson and Sussman.My rule is...

   Steps,Programming,No experience,No knowledge     2011-11-07 08:27:48

  A Better Way to Learn How to Program

Learning how to program can be a nightmare. An aspiring coder has to jump through many unpleasant hoops and mysterious error messages just to get "Hello, World!" printed on the screen. Then, she's left wondering, "OK, now what? How do I actually build something?"As game developers seeing someone struggle through this, we should be screaming, “NOOOOO!” The whole thing reeks of bad game design: a lot of work with no reward, unclear failure cases, advanced features pushed on new players...

   Programming pattern,Game design,Derivati     2011-09-19 13:51:17

  Programming is a Super Power

In a society where technology and the Internet have become incredibly prominent elements of our daily lives, being able to program is akin to having a super power. In fact, a programmer is able to not only easily interact with cutting edge technology, but also to take advantage of said technology to transform pure thoughts into something as tangible and useful as software.I would argue that there has never been a more exciting time for being able to program. While being a part of our industry ba...

   Programming,Programmer,Super power     2011-04-01 00:12:13

  C programming tips in SPARC architecture

If you are a newbie of C programmers in SPARC architecture (For example, working on Solaris), you should pay attention to the following tips:(1) By default, SPARC is big-endian (For Endianness, you can refer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endianness). It means for an integer (short, int, long, etc), the MSB will be stored in the lower address, while the LSB will be stored in the higher address. (2) SPARC requires byte-alignment. It means for a short (2 bytes long) variable, the star...

   C     2014-06-01 03:56:30

  Accessing Reddit top posts using OAuth

Previously one can use the https://www.reddit.com/r/rprogramming/top.json API to access one subreddit's top posts. This API doesn't require any access token to fetch the data. However, this API may not work all the time. Reddit may block the API's request if it finds that you are using a script or some app which accesses the API now and then. For an app or script which needs to fetch the data routinely, what should we do? Reddit provides one method which can be used to fetch this kind of to...

   REDDIT,OAUTH,TOP POSTS,HOT POSTS     2023-12-16 07:24:14

  Building an iPhone application.

One of my New Years resolutions was to finally learn the iOS SDK and build a 'real' application.I am happy to report that progress is going really well and wanted to share something that I have noticed about iOS programming.It only looks scary... it's not. It's actually very easy.Now, I am not building Mail, Angry Birds or Photosynth or anything, but the core concepts of the SDK are not that bad once you spend some time learning delegation. If you don't understand delegation, iOS programmi...

   Apple,iOS,Application development     2012-01-28 07:03:36

  The Hungry Programmer

Programming is a lot like eating. Tonight I was hungry. I wasn't at home. I couldn't go to the kitchen for a snack. I looked around and saw only McDonald's across the street. Then I was struck with the same dilemma that I face whenever I leave the comfort of my own home for any decent spread of time: Do I eat crappy food now and satisfy that hunger? Or do I stay hungry for a little longer and eat a healthy meal back at home? As I pondered this dilemma I couldn't help but notice how much i...

   Programmer,Hungry,Coder,Coding     2012-01-19 11:04:30