Aleksander’s Comments (group member since Jan 31, 2011)

Aleksander’s comments from the Software Engineering group.

Besides NoSql concepts described in this chapter I found the discussion on using consistent hashing interesting. For some reason I never realized that source control tools use hashing for synchronization.

This is first time when I find reading an electronic copy of the book more enjoying than actual book. I couldn't really tell what’s represented on black and white pictures, for example in Figure 2.8. ACID versus BASE, until I looked at the color pictures in the electronic copy.

I thought this online book would be interesting for other people interested in learning more about Big Data. I didn't read the whole thing, but I thought the presentation is very nice

http://www.hadoopilluminated.com/hado...

For some reason I stopped getting e-mails when someone posts a comment here…

I read this chapter probably month and a half ago. I liked the example that demonstrates how columns are used to build something interesting like wikis. I can see it to be used for something like data marts or multidimensional databases. It would be interesting to find out what actually triggered an idea of columns...

Riak sounds very interesting. I remember in my undergrad as one of the projects for the Network Programming class we had to write a network server to communicate with GDBM key/value database located on a different machine. Why no one of us thought about communicating with the server over HTTP protocol? After reading this chapter it sounds obvious, though it would probably involve more work after all. :) With Riak we get HTTP API, distributed key/value database, MIME types, MapReduce, internal functions, links. Some of these concepts were new to me. Very cool.

I think it was good overview of what to expect from using PostgreSQL. Day 3 discussion was most interesting as I had no idea that features like Metaphones and Multidimensional Hypercube were already built in RDMBS. Now I’m curious if they already have or planning to include an image or sound recognition systems. I mean, this chapter makes it clear that it makes more sense to perform heavy data processing where data lives. But it would be interesting to see what other data management systems in this book have to offer!

I didn’t know PostgreSQL is used by FAA and Skype. I think it was an interesting fact.

I’m excited about reading this book. I bought it last summer after attending Big Data presentation last summer at UST, but decided to postpone reading it until now. Hopefully, I will have time to work on some exercises behind each chapter as we did while reading Seven Languages in Seven Weeks book.

I’ve heard many good things about Big Data course provided last semester and projects that people worked on during the course.

I like the idea of this book; and so far I like the author’s approach to cover the material. But I agree that something about this book doesn’t make it a very enjoyable reading for me. I wish the author would put a little more details to smooth the flow of reading. Everything else is very good.

I’m just curious about how everyone did while working on problems for the Project Euler challenge?

I was actively working on this until mid-August. Most challenging problem for me was Problem 54 – How many hands did player one win in the game of poker?. It took probably 5-6 hours to finish that one.

Most interesting problem was problem 59 - Using a brute force attack, can you decrypt the cipher using XOR encryption?.

I will definitely keep doing this when time allows.
Just wondering if anyone has an experience with APL/J/K? I noticed in the forum, that most of the problems can be solved in single line, though syntax looks very weird to me…

This project works great for me – although I don’t have strong background in designing algorithms, I really like solving problems. So, basically this project allows me to learn and enjoy doing something at the same time. I started a little earlier, 2 weeks ago, and now I’m on Problem 28. I have to admit that solving these problems is very addictive, and I’m trying to limit myself to 1-2 problems per day, though I expect them to become more challenging in nearest future.

I’m using C++ for now, but I’m planning to switch to a different language like ARM assembly or some functional soon.

I felt a lot of passion coming from Fran Allen while reading this interview. I’m sure she would become a great teacher if she had pursued that route in life.

Brad, can you please recommend any Hadoop or NoSQL books? I hear these two become popular and get good reviews on Amazon.com

http://pragprog.com/book/rwdata/seven...

http://shop.oreilly.com/product/97805...

Ken Thompson is the second person after Joe Armstrong whose name I recognized in this book so far. I didn’t know that he works at Google, but I wish he talked a little more about his work there. I thought it was a little ironic that he is not certified in C language at Google, so I was wondering what he does there that doesn't need to be checked in. It was one of the interviews in this book that I read from start to finish without taking a break – there were many interesting little parts that would just catch my attention like pieces of Unix history, C language, operating systems in general, so I wouldn’t want to put the book down.

I liked the part about Bjarne Stroustrup - I’ve never thought that he could scream, I’ve seen a few videos with him, and he seemed like a very calm person. Unfortunately, not anymore. :) I also liked Ken speaking about C++ as this information can only get out during such interviews.

I can’t evaluate a language as a language designer like Dr. Deutsch, but I think that Perl is easy to learn and use scripting language, a very powerful one, as there are many different libraries available. I’ve never been a heavy Perl user but I enjoyed its regular expressions, formatting, file handling, different utilities, etc… And it’s possible to do scripting in object-oriented way, which I thought was interesting...

I understand that many programmers have hobbies like music, running, bicycling, playing hockey, woodworking, or anything else and spend as much time doing that as they do programming. Some programmers get promoted and become managers, directors, or simply find other opportunities in other fields. But I’m wondering how many programmers actually get tired of programming. I mean, not like programming as in coding, but as in software development – constantly solving problems, learning, designing, analyzing, testing, etc. I guess I’m just repeating Brad’s “how many programmers keep programming for their entire lives” and still have fun doing that. :)

I was even farther away from this discussion – I’ve never heard about Smalltalk except Design Patterns book (Gang of Four) that contains some of the code examples in that language.

Thanks, Rhian! For some reason I was unable to open first link here at work, but will definitely check it out at home.

In this interview Guy Steele makes many interesting points and observations about programming language development. I think he is a good story teller. Also, the list of programming languages he has actually used looks impressive.

Yeah, my favorite part was about foot-pounds vs. newtons bug at NASA. It was interesting how bugs like that get their way in mission-critical software. I would think people at NASA take software integration tests more seriously, but I guess it’s like everywhere else; and now I’m wondering how many bugs they find during flight, not necessarily leading to catastrophic failures.

I would love to read more about mission-critical software development if anyone can suggest interesting sources.

Interview with Peyton Jones kind of answered my question how to approach a program design in functional language. I have to admit that I couldn’t follow this discussion 100% most probably because of my very shaky understanding of functional languages and Haskell in particular.

I think Joe is very interesting and honest guy who is able to put different concepts in a simple from. After reading this interview, I got a better understanding of an idea using stateless variables and functional paradigm as a whole. Unfortunately I don’t remember much about Erlang language – it was probably one of the languages in “7 languages” that I still haven’t done any programming exercises for. I like the idea of writing documentation to better understand own code; unfortunately, I don’t do this enough even after learning UML in my software design course. This may actually help to learn how to explain other people how programs work.

Reading the interview with this guy feels like reading a good book. I mean his answers are very smooth, full of meaning delivering clear message. So, it makes me to believe his books are very well written as well. I like his attitude toward programming paradigms and styles where he says that he tends not to buy into any religions! :) Joshua makes many interesting observations about programming and derives reasonable conclusions that hard not to accept. For instance, C++ complexity. I have to agree, every new C++ standard adds more complexity to the language. It was actually funny and at the same time a little sad to watch C++ standardization committee members arguing about how new features are supposed to be used after new C++11 standard release, and they rarely agreed on anything. I mean, those are people who are going to write books and teach other people the language!!…

C++ and Knuth conversations come up in every interview so far in this book. So I’m wondering:
Has anyone here read Art of Computer Programming? And if yes, what do you think?