Algorithms and Testing Awesome Sauce Java
I'm developing a habit that I used to have before the really bad head injury, when I was at Apple. I'm reading, studying, and practicing from books.
Whoot! I know, right? It's totally revolutionary.
I'm going to spend some time writing about what I read here, because what I'm reading is directly related to some aspect of Awesome Sauce Java with Hot Sauce. Plus, writing about what I do helps me remember that I've done it. I find that when I want to remember, I mostly can't, unless I see a picture or write about it. The cool thing about pictures is they provide a ton of memory stimulation. The problem with pictures is I forget them as soon as I take them, so rarely remember to look at them, even if I try to remember to look at them.
Writing is the best way I've found to help me recover brain function. It's weird to look back and see that I've mostly been following whoever I happened to be around, and many of those people are not only people I never would have ever known, many of the people I've known in the last 27+ years have been downright scary. It's like they've hunted me down and befriended me. Or they saw I was broken and had fun with the stupid rube/hick. People can be really mean. I had no idea.
Since the injury, I've been exposed to an underside of life I didn't even know existed. If even 10% of the crap people have told me is true? We need to hose a lot of people off, get them to clean out their insides, and convince them to change their diet. As if... I designed a stable, healing diet. It altered the course of my health and has helped me recover my mind. Though I haven't had the funds to follow it for 12 years, just knowing how to subsist with healthy-enough cheap food has allowed me to maintain enough health to keep healing, though it's a lot more sugar than I would eat (in the form of brown rice and beans.)
Before the injury, I was taking Extension courses at UC Berkeley. One of my favorite classes was Algorithms. It's fun to learn not only how to approach problems with knowledge regarding good solutions and tools to apply, but how to measure how long an algorithm will take to run.
I'm reading The Algorithm Design Manual at the library today. Much of the code is written in C, which is fun to read again. I'm glad I don't write in C anymore. It's a nice language, but I haven't needed to be on the metal in a while. Oh boy, there's a lot to say about early optimization and languages, but I'll save that for when Awesome Sauce Java has been released.
When I was taking the Berkeley class, we used Robert Sedgewick's book, Algorithms, which I enjoyed a lot. I carried it with me for years after the injury, but only rarely opened it. Though I'd studied it and understood many of the concepts well enough to get an A and apply the techniques to software I worked on, like a memory manager that used VM techniques, after the injury, it was incomprehensible.
I've been unable to wrap my head around mathematically validating algorithms until maybe a few years ago, when I could start applying thought to measuring algorithms. I started to remember that they could be measured, but I still can't remember the table I once memorized of algorithmic performance. That's one of the reasons I'm studying again.
So, here I am, reading about best, worst, and average-case complexity, (lg n), (n), (n lg n), (n^2), (2^n), and (n!) performance. It's good stuff. I know. I'm a total nerd. It's fun to know things and really know them so they can be taught, not just the how, but the why.
I'm skipping around a bit, to remember some of the algorithms. Will add more to this article until I start to branch out and write some of the algorithmic code in Awesome Sauce Java to highlight not only what ASJ code looks like, but how well (hopefully) it performs.
Have a great day!
Michael
2/26/18
Whoot! I know, right? It's totally revolutionary.
I'm going to spend some time writing about what I read here, because what I'm reading is directly related to some aspect of Awesome Sauce Java with Hot Sauce. Plus, writing about what I do helps me remember that I've done it. I find that when I want to remember, I mostly can't, unless I see a picture or write about it. The cool thing about pictures is they provide a ton of memory stimulation. The problem with pictures is I forget them as soon as I take them, so rarely remember to look at them, even if I try to remember to look at them.
Writing is the best way I've found to help me recover brain function. It's weird to look back and see that I've mostly been following whoever I happened to be around, and many of those people are not only people I never would have ever known, many of the people I've known in the last 27+ years have been downright scary. It's like they've hunted me down and befriended me. Or they saw I was broken and had fun with the stupid rube/hick. People can be really mean. I had no idea.
Since the injury, I've been exposed to an underside of life I didn't even know existed. If even 10% of the crap people have told me is true? We need to hose a lot of people off, get them to clean out their insides, and convince them to change their diet. As if... I designed a stable, healing diet. It altered the course of my health and has helped me recover my mind. Though I haven't had the funds to follow it for 12 years, just knowing how to subsist with healthy-enough cheap food has allowed me to maintain enough health to keep healing, though it's a lot more sugar than I would eat (in the form of brown rice and beans.)
Before the injury, I was taking Extension courses at UC Berkeley. One of my favorite classes was Algorithms. It's fun to learn not only how to approach problems with knowledge regarding good solutions and tools to apply, but how to measure how long an algorithm will take to run.
I'm reading The Algorithm Design Manual at the library today. Much of the code is written in C, which is fun to read again. I'm glad I don't write in C anymore. It's a nice language, but I haven't needed to be on the metal in a while. Oh boy, there's a lot to say about early optimization and languages, but I'll save that for when Awesome Sauce Java has been released.
When I was taking the Berkeley class, we used Robert Sedgewick's book, Algorithms, which I enjoyed a lot. I carried it with me for years after the injury, but only rarely opened it. Though I'd studied it and understood many of the concepts well enough to get an A and apply the techniques to software I worked on, like a memory manager that used VM techniques, after the injury, it was incomprehensible.
I've been unable to wrap my head around mathematically validating algorithms until maybe a few years ago, when I could start applying thought to measuring algorithms. I started to remember that they could be measured, but I still can't remember the table I once memorized of algorithmic performance. That's one of the reasons I'm studying again.
So, here I am, reading about best, worst, and average-case complexity, (lg n), (n), (n lg n), (n^2), (2^n), and (n!) performance. It's good stuff. I know. I'm a total nerd. It's fun to know things and really know them so they can be taught, not just the how, but the why.
I'm skipping around a bit, to remember some of the algorithms. Will add more to this article until I start to branch out and write some of the algorithmic code in Awesome Sauce Java to highlight not only what ASJ code looks like, but how well (hopefully) it performs.
Have a great day!
Michael
2/26/18
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