http://www.jakevoytko.com/blog Ye Olde Computer Science Blogge Fri, 16 May 2008 04:00:50 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en After taking an abstract algebra class, I decided to revisit something from my cryptography class and figure out how the Number Field Sieve works, since my final project was writing the quadratic sieve [side-note: if anyone wants the code for it, I'll throw it up on the site. Actual sieving ... http://www.jakevoytko.com/blog/2008/05/16/where-are-the-tools-for-your-job/ Or, This Started as a Diatribe About Bad Programming Books, and Turned Into Beating a Dead Horse. Decades after The Mythical Man Month examined the management of software development, projects are still failing at an alarming rate. Some estimates say that as few as 34% of software engineering undertakings ... http://www.jakevoytko.com/blog/2008/05/12/how-reddit-will-maybe-save-software-development/ It's possible to program a computer in English. It's also possible to make an airplane controlled by reins and spurs. - John McCarthy, 196x. This is pretty thought-provoking for being a flippant remark on computer language design. I don't 100% agree with the sentiment of this quote (which is hard ... http://www.jakevoytko.com/blog/2008/05/09/talking-to-people-not-computers/ Or: Yes, I'm studying for finals and don't have time for a more rigorous post. If you haven't read a transcript of the talk "You and Your Research " by Richard Hamming, I highly recommend that you take the 45 minutes and read it. Since you are unlikely to, I have ... http://www.jakevoytko.com/blog/2008/05/05/you-and-your-research-by-richard-hamming/ I'm ignoring my Friday quote to tell you the best prank that has ever been played on me. My final exams are this week, so I don't have the time to write rigorous CS/programming/math posts or search for quotes, so today (and possibly Monday) will be amusing anecdotes. My parents have ... http://www.jakevoytko.com/blog/2008/05/02/yes-jacob-there-is-indeed-a-santa-claus/ As a thought experiment, I recently looked at various programming methodologies to see if I could find common ground between them. I looked at the following methodologies: Scrum XP IBM's Rational Unified Process The Joel Test Ideas such as literate programming were ignored from the list, as any of the processes listed above could also be ... http://www.jakevoytko.com/blog/2008/04/28/its-all-an-excuse/ Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things. ~ Isaac Newton, "Rules for methodizing the Apocalypse", Rule 9 http://www.jakevoytko.com/blog/2008/04/25/simplicity/ Calculus Via O Notation In the article "Calculus via O Notation," Alexandre Borovik transcribes a letter written by Donald Knuth where Knuth describes the idea of calculus in terms of [tex]\mathcal{O}[/tex] notation. He shows that not only is it possible to use [tex]\mathcal{O}[/tex] notation in integration and derivation, but that the ... http://www.jakevoytko.com/blog/2008/04/21/o-notation-via-calculus/ "What we meant by that was when you start looking at a problem and it seems really simple with all these simple solutions, you don't really understand the complexity of the problem. And your solutions are way too oversimplified, and they don't work. Then you get ... http://www.jakevoytko.com/blog/2008/04/18/degrees-of-design/ Or: Yes, I'm The 300th Person To Write This Blog Post. A year and a half ago, I abandoned Visual Studio to try to use the two most popular code editors: Vim and Emacs. Both of them have their advantages, but fall short of being the perfect editor. Vim The first coder's text ... http://www.jakevoytko.com/blog/2008/04/13/somewhere-between-vim-and-emacs-there-is-a-great-text-editor/