I started the Tech Tuesday series on programming in April of this year with an overview post that compared programming to telling a person how to do something. At the time, I presented nine different questions that this raises, such as which language to speak and which words to choose in that language. Some of the early posts that followed dealt with the three foundational questions, such as the choice of programming languages, their syntax and semantics. The next set of posts addressed the f...

I started the Tech Tuesday series on programming in April of this year with an overview post that compared programming to telling a person how to do something. At the time, I presented nine different questions that this raises, such as which language to speak and which words to choose in that language. Some of the early posts that followed dealt with the three foundational questions, such as the choice of programming languages, their syntax and semantics. The next set of posts addressed the f...

Today will be the last Tech Tuesday for 2012 as I will be taking another one of my information slim down breaks starting next week. In the review of programming topics covered so far, I pointed out that we have not yet looked at any of the questions that arise once we have given instructions to the computer. The biggest one here is does it all work? Or are there errors? How would we know and what do we do about it? Program errors are known as bugs and finding and getting rid of them as debugg...

Today will be the last Tech Tuesday for 2012 as I will be taking another one of my information slim down breaks starting next week. In the review of programming topics covered so far, I pointed out that we have not yet looked at any of the questions that arise once we have given instructions to the computer. The biggest one here is does it all work? Or are there errors? How would we know and what do we do about it? Program errors are known as bugs and finding and getting rid of them as debugg...

In today’s Tech Tuesday we are continuing our romp through Data Structures as part of the ongoing series on programming by looking at JSON. Now technically JSON, which stands for JavaScript Object Notation, is not a data structure but a textual notation (as its name implies). But JSON has become ubiquitous and provides a natural segue to objects (next Tuesday) that I figured it makes sense to discuss it here. Sticking with the example of points, the JSON for a point might look like the follow...

In today’s Tech Tuesday we are continuing our romp through Data Structures as part of the ongoing series on programming by looking at JSON. Now technically JSON, which stands for JavaScript Object Notation, is not a data structure but a textual notation (as its name implies). But JSON has become ubiquitous and provides a natural segue to objects (next Tuesday) that I figured it makes sense to discuss it here. Sticking with the example of points, the JSON for a point might look like the follow...

Last week in Tech Tuesday, we continued our introduction to algorithms by looking at a first implementation. As a reminder we are trying to find out whether a sequence of integers contains a number that is repeated four times in a row. Here is that Python code together with a bug fix for dealing with empty number sequences:

Last week in Tech Tuesday, we continued our introduction to algorithms by looking at a first implementation. As a reminder we are trying to find out whether a sequence of integers contains a number that is repeated four times in a row. Here is that Python code together with a bug fix for dealing with empty number sequences:

If you have been a faithful reader of Tech Tuesday, you may be asking yourself just how many more posts on Data Structures could possibly be coming up as this is now the sixth such post (including the introduction). The answer is that after today there will be at least one more before moving on to a different subject for now. But that’s not for a lack of material – there is always more to say about data structures. And if nothing else one important takeaway from these posts should be that und...

If you have been a faithful reader of Tech Tuesday, you may be asking yourself just how many more posts on Data Structures could possibly be coming up as this is now the sixth such post (including the introduction). The answer is that after today there will be at least one more before moving on to a different subject for now. But that’s not for a lack of material – there is always more to say about data structures. And if nothing else one important takeaway from these posts should be that und...

This is the fifth post on Data Structures as part of my long Tech Tuesday series on programming. And today we finally make it to a structure known as an object. There is a whole literature on so-called object oriented programming, which sometimes seems like a modern idea because of its prominence in the 1990s but really goes much further back than that with programming languages such as Smalltalk in the 1970s and basic object concepts go back even earlier than that. While another approach kno...

This is the fifth post on Data Structures as part of my long Tech Tuesday series on programming. And today we finally make it to a structure known as an object. There is a whole literature on so-called object oriented programming, which sometimes seems like a modern idea because of its prominence in the 1990s but really goes much further back than that with programming languages such as Smalltalk in the 1970s and basic object concepts go back even earlier than that. While another approach kno...

Last Tech Tuesday was now two weeks ago due to Hurricane Sandy. As a quick refresher, we looked at where the word algorithm comes from, saw that an algorithm is similar to a recipe and gave an example of a simple algorithm for finding a repeated number in a sequence of numbers. Today we will take a deeper dive on this particular algorithm and see at least one specific implementation. All of this is still part of a by now fairly long running series of posts on programming. So revisiting the al...

Last Tech Tuesday was now two weeks ago due to Hurricane Sandy. As a quick refresher, we looked at where the word algorithm comes from, saw that an algorithm is similar to a recipe and gave an example of a simple algorithm for finding a repeated number in a sequence of numbers. Today we will take a deeper dive on this particular algorithm and see at least one specific implementation. All of this is still part of a by now fairly long running series of posts on programming. So revisiting the al...

One of the reasons that we decided to move to Chelsea was the proximity to the USV office. The other was that our kids can walk to Avenues, a new private school with an ambitious program of building campuses in leading cities around the world. Another distinguishing factor of Avenues has been their embrace of technology which got a good writeup in today’s Wall Street Journal. Our kids each have both an iPad and a MacBook Air from school and use both of them heavily across a variety of classes...

One of the reasons that we decided to move to Chelsea was the proximity to the USV office. The other was that our kids can walk to Avenues, a new private school with an ambitious program of building campuses in leading cities around the world. Another distinguishing factor of Avenues has been their embrace of technology which got a good writeup in today’s Wall Street Journal. Our kids each have both an iPad and a MacBook Air from school and use both of them heavily across a variety of classes...

We have covered a lot of ground in the previous Tech Tuesday posts on programming. Now it is time to return to the original definition that I provided in the introductory post, where I wrote that programming is “telling a computer what to do.” We have all the pieces we need: we have covered the syntax and semantics of programming languages; we have learned about variables and the data types they can hold; we have looked at reserved words and the control structures we can form with them; we ha...

We have covered a lot of ground in the previous Tech Tuesday posts on programming. Now it is time to return to the original definition that I provided in the introductory post, where I wrote that programming is “telling a computer what to do.” We have all the pieces we need: we have covered the syntax and semantics of programming languages; we have learned about variables and the data types they can hold; we have looked at reserved words and the control structures we can form with them; we ha...

Today’s Tech Tuesday post will wrap up the algorithms mini-series. Last Tuesday I presented implementations of the same algorithm in five different languages. I had mentioned in an earlier post that the particular problem we are solving – seeing if a sequence of numbers contains a number that is repeated at least four times in a row – belongs to a class of problems known as pattern detection or pattern matching. Now there are much more general algorithms for this class of problems and instead...

Today’s Tech Tuesday post will wrap up the algorithms mini-series. Last Tuesday I presented implementations of the same algorithm in five different languages. I had mentioned in an earlier post that the particular problem we are solving – seeing if a sequence of numbers contains a number that is repeated at least four times in a row – belongs to a class of problems known as pattern detection or pattern matching. Now there are much more general algorithms for this class of problems and instead...