Simon Peyton-Jones: Closer to Nirvana

Интервью SPJ на channel 9: http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/Charles/YOW-2011-Simon-Peyton-Jones-Closer-to-Nirvana

на реддите: http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/nf4kg/simon_peytonjones_closer_to_nirvana/

how to become a better programmer

• Programming. Working on interesting projects
• Working with people far smarter than myself
• Always listening to what others have to say, regardless if they're junior, intermediate, senior or guru
• Learning other frameworks/languages, and seeing how they do things, and compare that to stuff that you already know
• Reading about patterns, best practices, and then examining your stuff and applying those patterns where necessary
• Consciously try to improve. Never stop learning
• Read: books, websites, blogs
• Read other people's code
• Hit the gym regularly
• Start a Pet project
• Contributing to/participating in open-source projects
• Competing in TopCoder Algorithm contests.
• Solve problems on Project Euler
• Challenge yourself with extracurricular activities (dancing, board games, musical instrument)
• Learn English (for Russian Software Engineers only)
  

Links:

http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/44177/what-is-the-single-most-effective-thing-you-did-to-improve-your-programming-skil

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/82639/how-to-become-a-better-programmer

http://jasonrudolph.com/blog/2011/08/09/programming-achievements-how-to-level-up-as-a-developer/

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/01/how-to-become-a-better-programmer-by-not-programming.html

The Secret to Super Productivity

Секрет успеха по ссылке

Unit-Testing SICP

Recently while reading SICP I got an idea of ​​using unit-testing techniques to perform the exercises. This is a excellent way to practice both SICP and unit-testing. Because of using MIT Scheme, my choice fell on the library "test-manager" by Alexey Radul. It is really easy to use and contains all required features)

So, let's try to use it for the exercise 1.16.

Design a procedure that evolves an iterative exponentiation process that uses successive squaring and uses a logarithmic number of steps, as does fast-expt.

; code
(define (fast-expt b n)
 (define (iter a b n)
  (cond
   ((= n 1) (* a b))
   ((even? n) (iter a (* b b) (/ n 2)))
   (else (iter (* a b) b (- n 1)))))
 (iter 1 b n))

; tests
(load "test-manager/load.scm")
(define-each-test
  (assert= 1 (fast-expt 2 0))
  (assert= 2 (fast-expt 2 1))
  (assert= (expt 2 8) (fast-expt 2 8))
  (assert= (expt 2 6) (fast-expt 2 6)))

(run-registered-tests)

Run:

mit-scheme < ex1_16.scm

1 ]=> (run-registered-tests)

Oops! I completely forgot about condition when the exponent n is zero.
Fix it:

(define (fast-expt b n)
 (define (iter a b n)
  (cond
   ((= n 0) a)
   ((even? n) (iter a (* b b) (/ n 2)))
   (else (iter (* a b) b (- n 1)))))
 (iter 1 b n))

Run it again:

1 ]=> (run-registered-tests)....

4 tests, 0 failures, 0 errors.

That's it!

Список книг по Computer Science и IT

Появилось свободное время и огромное желание чего-нибудь такого почитать, чтобы стать чуть умнее) Пока остановил свой выбор на SICP (когда-то давно смотрел видео лекции, но уже почти ничего не помню), а остальные книжки взял на заметку.

Список:

• Don Knuth. The Art of Computer Programming
• Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
• Compilers: Principles, Techniques and Tools
• Cormen. Introduction to algorithms
• "Gang of Four" Design Patterns book
• The Mythical Man-Month
• Concepts, Techniques and Models of Computer Programming
• Douglas Hofstadter. Gödel, Escher, Bach
• Martin Fowler. Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture
• Martin Fowler. Domain Specific Languages
• Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach
• Code Complete (2nd Ed) by Steve McConnell
• Pragmatic Programmer

Functional Programming:

• Learn You a Haskell for Great Good
• Types and Programming Languages by Pierce.
• Purely Functional Data Structures by Chris Okasaki
• The Haskell Road to Logic, Maths and Programming. Kees Doeats & Jan van Eick
• Real World Haskell

Tanenbaum:

• Tanenbaum. Structured Computer Organization.
• Tanenbaum. Operating Systems: Operating System Design and Implementation
  
• Tanenbaum and Wetherall. Computer Networks
  
• Tanenbaum. Operating Systems
  

C++, C#:

• Herb Sutter. Guru Of the Week
  
• Jeffrey Richter. CLR via C#
• Jeffrey Richter. Windows via C/C++
  
• Stroustrup: The Design and Evolution of C++
• Modern C++ Design

Ссылки

• http://www.reddit.com/r/compsci/comments/gprp0/is_there_a_list_of_the_canonical_introductory/
• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1711/what-is-the-single-most-influential-book-every-programmer-should-read
• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/143760/what-books-should-i-read-to-have-an-undergraduate-education-in-computer-science
• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5489432/sicp-equivalent-for-haskell
• http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2008/07/podcast-12/
• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/302270/what-is-the-best-book-for-learning-about-algorithms