Donald Duck posted:

I was looking through this thread originally to find books to read, as a CS student. Found them on the first page, but just wanted to ask some questions. I'm just finishing my second year now.
The books listed were Code Complete and Practice of Programing, as well as the Art of Programming. Would all these books be useful for me? I imagine most of the Knuth book would be beyond me at this stage

quote:

Second question, pretty much everything we've done has been just in Java, with a tiny bit of C in one of my modules. I've picked up the K&R C book to help me learn C over the summer. Since I want to know more than just Java, what else is worth learning?

quote:

Edit: I was reading reviews on the Knuth books and saw they code in them is in MIX? This would make them pretty out dated would it not?

HB posted:

A general algorithm for sorting a dataset that will not fit in RAM might still have some applications. Never say never

Magicmat posted:

Would getting a BA hinder me?

Thermopyle posted:

I have a Windows app that I'm writing in python and will be packaging up with py2exe or something similar. It requires a DLL to be registered on Windows. I'm not familiar with distribution of Windows apps.

What's the best way to handle this for end users instead of making them open a command prompt with admin privileges and typing "regsvr32.exe blah.dll"? I can of course register it programatically from python, but that still doesn't solve the needing admin privs...

gggiiimmmppp posted:

I'm working on a standard dynamic linked list assignment for a 200 level computer science class. We had a question on the last test to the effect of "if these cout << ... lines were added to the different constructors, destructor, and assignment operator, what would the output be for these code snippets?" Basically, a roundabout way of asking which bit of code you're dealing with on the back end to do various tasks.

So now, back to the program at hand, I've got things ready to hand in and working gloriously (the assignment was actually to make some modificatins to the author's code from our textbook) but I decided to try adding a cout to the destructor on a whim and it just doesnt loving do anything unless I manually call the destructor, even with the author's code, in either Visual C++ or Bloodshed. It compiles and runs without so much as a warning, and won't compile at all if I comment out the destructor. But no matter what I do, I can't get output from within the destructor to show up unless I call it myself.

Is this a normal thing? Or am I actually possibly doing something wrong?

For reference, it's based on bag3.h/node1.h from here: http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~main/chapter5/. I can post

bobua posted:

Not specifically a programming question, but probably people who know the answer in here. How does XML handle storing XML data? For example, if I made a program that writes the contents of a textbox to an XML file, and someone typed in some xml text that conflicted with mine, wouldn't that break it?

I personally handled it by checking the textbox for conflicting tags first, but that just seems silly in the real world.

jstirrell posted:

shrughes posted:

Unless you're incapable of reading facts and understanding them, you shouldn't have a problem. C is not complicated.

tef posted:

try

code:

simple_relation(a,b).
simple_relation(b,c).

transitive_relation(X,Y) :- simple_relation(X,Y).
transitive_relation(X,Y) :- simple_relation(Y,X).

Rocko Bonaparte posted:

I have an XML schema question. I have an element with two attributes whose rules change together. Look at this example for what I mean:

[code]
<xs:element name="stuff">
<xs:complexType>
<xs:attribute name="name" type="xs:string" use="required"/>
<xs:attribute name="type" type="myDataType" use="required"/>
<xs:attribute name="value" type="xs:string" use="required"/>
</xs:complexType>
</xs:element>

Let's say that the custom type "myDataType" is an enumeration of strings describing variable types like int, float, or string. The situation is that I'd like to adapt the rules for the value attribute so that depending on the given type, it can validate the value more strictly. So if the data type the user gives is "int" then I was hoping to validate that the value field is indeed an integer rather than something else like a float or a string. Is there a way to do this?

_aaron posted:

I'm looking at getting a Master's degree, but I'd like to do it part-time, and online if possible. I see that the University of Illinois offers an online "Master of Computer Science" (http://courses.illinois.edu/cis/2011/fall/programs/graduate/computer_science.html). This is a non-thesis program, which differentiates it from the standard "Master of Science, Computer Science." What disadvantages would such a program entail? If I wanted a PhD in the future, would this be problematic? Would employers view MCS differently than MSCS? Is this really not a big deal at all?

pokeyman posted:

I'm not the one who was asking, and I believe you, but what are some of those reasons?

qntm posted:

To answer this question we need to know the probability distribution which was used to drop the treasure on the line. We can't assume a "uniform" distribution because there's no such thing on the real line, or indeed on the integers.

Zombywuf posted:

I thought we were talking about the prior pdf for the position of the cow over the entire set of integers. There is no appropriate scaling factor for your function in that case.

Zombywuf posted:

Got any references for that, I need to increase my reading backlog by a few MB.

cannibustacap posted:

I am looking to write some Java classes/methods in Eclipse and have them run in my team's Visual Studio C++ application.

Now, I know I can just make a Jar file out of my functions and run them, but the Jar files execute the static void main---which means it will not return any values.

I would like be able to run my java methods in C++ and have it return values.

So I am wondering what the best way to do this is. I understand it may come down to some type of shell, but I just can't figure out what.

I'd like it to hopefully be very simple, not require a lot of steps. Something standard and straightforward (hard to find on Google).


Also, ideally, is there a way to get my C++ functions to talk with Java also? Specifically, I compile my Matlab code into C++ shared libraries, so I have the working .DLL's and .H files, but without some kind of shell, they won't work with Java.

I understand this may interfere with cross-compatibility. That is okay, not an issue. Just want to get this one thing happening.

Misogynist posted:

I'm playing around with machine learning before I start getting heavy into the network monitoring app I'm writing. What are some cool things to attempt with hidden Markov models that are more complicated than doing pattern analysis on Rock-Paper-Scissors or something?

pokeyman posted:

Keep in mind what a reader of your code will likely expect. If an exception in the given language or domain typically means "terrible things happening", using them for flow control makes it harder for the reader to understand your code. If an exception is raised whenever an iterator completes, however, your reader may be used to seeing exceptions used this way.

TheJazzMess posted:

Can anyone recommend a good intro to comp sci book? I'm looking for something that will let me get a "feel" for CompSci.

Nodrog posted:

Those books seem to be more about the (to me) more boring aspects of computer science (hardware, lowlevel stuff in a non-programming way, general IT concepts, etc). I guess the key point is that computer science is a really huge field, and that different people are going to enjoy different bits. But a book like that is going to put people off, I think. I mean would you personally read it? Its 200 pages in before it even mentions algorithms.

TheJazzMess posted:

How important is school rank in this field? I am currently going to community college and will be transferring to a 4 year uni (preferably in-state) but I'm not sure if the CS programs at Rutgers/Rowan are any good.

calcio posted:

I move pixel by pixel towards the middle and I can query my x,y location and the board's width/height.

calcio posted:

It's 0,0 top left and movement will wrap around.

ColdPie posted:

I have a dumb language theory/implementation question.

Why can't I do this in any language I know of?

pre:

void do_something(void)
{
    //do something
}

void init_then_do_something(void)
{
    //do some init
    return do_something();
}

That is, have a void function "return" another void function. I can't think of any reason not to allow it, and it makes refactoring easier should I want to add a return value to these functions, as I won't have to modify the body of init_then_do_something() at all. So, why can't I do this?

Emong posted:

I've never used a debugger before and I have no idea what I'm doing here.

ancient lobster posted:

Ok, stats wasn't a requirement, but I'll take your advice about my other books.

'Discrete math' also gives me something to work with, and I'll start here: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-042j-mathematics-for-computer-science-fall-2010/readings/

Thanks for your help.

AlsoD posted:

I'm just starting to use LaTeX and while finding out how to do a particular thing doesn't seem that hard, knowing what to do is a lot less certain.

I'm essentially writing a report containing code snippets (Haskell if it matters). Would the best way to have verbatim (or alltt) blocks around the code, make it a monospaced font and then format it myself, or use a library like listings to format it for me?

I'm pretty close to just giving up and slapping it into OpenOffice but I wanted to try and learn something new. Any tips?

PDP-1 posted:

If you're up for a bit of math to mix in with your programming, Project Euler has a list of things to work on.

ShoulderDaemon posted:

write.csv( data, "file.csv" )

You may find http://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/R-data.html helpful.

Gogey posted:

Hey guys, I'm a freshman in college so I'm just kinda planning things out now for a Major in Computer Science (in an engineering program if that changes anything, doubt it will but the curriculum might be different, who knows), and I know Linear Algebra is really important for CompSci and it's required by my school either way. On the other hand, Differential Equations isn't, and I was just wondering if a class in it would be worth it? Does it apply to the field nearly as much as Linear Algebra?

TasteMyHouse posted:

I'm lookin' to read the tr0 binary data format generated by hspice into R. Anyone have anything that might point me in the right direction? Useful R packages, information on the hspice format's layout, etc?

TasteMyHouse posted:

It can output ASCII but I was specifically tasked with figuring out how to read the binary format. Right now I'm working on reverse engineering it.