More challenging projects every programmer should try • Hacker News Board

Re: More challenging projects every programmer should try

#201

Post by wizzwizz4 » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 4:57 PM UTC

qw3rty01 wrote: post #199

andrepd wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question: do you feel comfortable knowing that your job is doing something which is essentially net zero value to society? Negative in fact, you're burning resources which are needed elsewhere, and contributing to concentration of wealth. Not being rude or judgemental, just want to know how you feel about this.

This is a pretty loaded question to then say "not trying to be judgemental"...take out the bias if that's actually the case: "What kind of benefit do you believe your work provides to society?" or "How do you justify the extra resources taken away from society that may be more beneficial elsewhere, such as X?"

I'd argue that “how do you justify” is more loaded. “Do you feel comfortable with [objective description of the reason one might be uncomfortable with it]?” is better than how I'd ask it.

Re: More challenging projects every programmer should try

#202

Post by chubot » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 5:00 PM UTC

profquail wrote: post #190

chubot wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very cool! And thanks for the reminder about Unicode. I think supporting union and intersection is also somewhat unique to the derivatives method, and also related? (Although I think there are really 2 derivatives methods: Brzozowski and Antimirov) What happens if you don't do the optimizations? Does the DFA blow up in size, meaning the compile time is large? Or does it make for a slower runtime? I would expect most…

The optimizations get you the following: * Normalization: this is where "smart constructors" come in handy; having a normal form for the terms allows the caching to work better. This also impacts the compactness of the generated DFA. * Hash-consing: this turns structural equality (in this case) to a simple pointer equality; applied recursively, this makes it much faster to compare two terms for equality, and overall…

Great info, thanks! I think derivatives could be very suited for a compact implementation of POSIX regular expressions. You need to handle unicode classes but not backreferences!

Although it does seem more suited for functional languages for sure, whereas I basically only have a C runtime.

Capturing might be an issue. I found this

https://www.home.hs-karlsruhe.de/~suma0002/publications/posi...

but I think it's actually being a bit pedantic, i.e. if "almost all POSIX implementations are buggy" then applications don't rely on that exact semantic (they probably rely on the buggy one, if anything ...)

Maybe more relevant: http://www.home.hs-karlsruhe.de/~suma0002/publications/ppdp1...

Re: More challenging projects every programmer should try

#203

Post by UnpossibleJim » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 5:04 PM UTC

atomicnumber3 wrote: post #21

henning wrote: post #9

As someone who has played with writing trading bots but never traded them with real money, some advice: if your results seem too good to be true, they probably are. Your trading bot may be doing unrealistic things or its results may not be reliable if the following are true: - You are trading in a market with low liquidity or one that is controlled by a small number of market participants. I'm not an expert but I thi…

I worked in this industry. 2 more common issues: * Doing a latency-sensitive trade when you don't have good execution. It's easy to go wild in simulation and think you can flip in and out of positions. But if you're a retail trader (and in this context, by that I mean "not connected directly to the exchanges, at the minimum") * Not taking into account the impact of your own trading on markets. This is obviously impos…

I see a question, so I'm sorry to ask another but as someone who hasn't done algo trading I'm curious. How quickly are you actually able to trade. I understand with low level trading, through a broker, the trades can be pretty instantaneous. On penny stocks, though, sans broker and with just an API or website that you set up with a field bot, how quickly can you expect for these trades to go through, really?

I hear these horrid tales of people killing themselves over bad trades and lines of credit and I wonder how much is poorly written code and how much is the chaos and whim of the market (don't worry, I'm not going to try algo trading).

Re: More challenging projects every programmer should try

#204

Post by dev-ns8 » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 5:27 PM UTC

yodsanklai wrote: post #189

anonytrary wrote: post #130

This article is aimed towards students. It's great advice for students who are in college, know very little, and want to improve their CS skills. It's poor advice for someone who already has a STEM degree and wants to build something useful and profitable. If you already know how these things work, your time is better spent on the "edge of the circle": http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/ which appl…

> If you're in the latter group -- you've already got the skills to build real shit. Don't waste your time on homework problems. I disagree. Not everything is about business and money. Many people already build "real shit" for a living and want to simply have fun building other things, and focus on the cool parts, and not all the boring parts involved in a commercial project. Also CS is constantly evolving. Nobody kn…

Totally unrelated, but what's the connection between your name and the famous Muay Thai fighter Yodthanong Photirat, better known as Yodsanklai Fairtex?? [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yodsanklai_Fairtex

Re: More challenging projects every programmer should try

#205

Post by yodsanklai » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 5:30 PM UTC

dev-ns8 wrote: post #204

yodsanklai wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you're in the latter group -- you've already got the skills to build real shit. Don't waste your time on homework problems. I disagree. Not everything is about business and money. Many people already build "real shit" for a living and want to simply have fun building other things, and focus on the cool parts, and not all the boring parts involved in a commercial project. Also CS is constantly evolving. Nobody kn…

Totally unrelated, but what's the connection between your name and the famous Muay Thai fighter Yodthanong Photirat, better known as Yodsanklai Fairtex?? [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yodsanklai_Fairtex

He was my inspiration for the name, first name that popped to mind when I chose my HN user name :)

Re: More challenging projects every programmer should try

#206

Post by ufmace » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 5:33 PM UTC

anonytrary wrote: post #146

watwut wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people draw blank when they are trying to come up with project idea. They are programmers, not creative after all. Which is why lists like this help.

If you are trying to think of an idea, you're already doing it wrong. The best ideas are motivated by problems you encounter yourself, not by trying to think of ideas. This is the biggest mistake you see with 20-something founders. Best way to come up with ideas is to use existing solutions and realize how shitty they are. Pretty much every single company was formed this way. > They are programmers, not creative afte…

IMO, this is confusing completely different things. This is a list of projects to try if you want to learn more advanced programming. They're all handy if you're an entry-level developer looking to improve your skills, or want to really dig into a new language with something more involved than Hello World, or are just bored. Nobody ever said they had any connection to profitable business ideas.

Re: More challenging projects every programmer should try

#207

Post by dev-ns8 » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 5:34 PM UTC

yodsanklai wrote: post #205

dev-ns8 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally unrelated, but what's the connection between your name and the famous Muay Thai fighter Yodthanong Photirat, better known as Yodsanklai Fairtex?? [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yodsanklai_Fairtex

He was my inspiration for the name, first name that popped to mind when I chose my HN user name :)

That's awesome! Really cool to see another knowledgeable fan of Muay Thai on this forum!

Re: More challenging projects every programmer should try

#208

Post by schoen » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 8:20 PM UTC

psibi wrote: post #164

schoen wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really enjoyed taking Ullman's Automata course on Coursera. I found it was great for better appreciating topics like * searching * implementation of automata in electronic circuits * challenges of formal specifications for things like protocols and grammars, as well as for verifying their correctness; implementation strategies for applying these specifications * computability and complexity * programming language t…

Somehow I found the course very dry (as compared to other coursera course like Dan Grossman's PL course).

I agree that it was quite dry, but the intellectual content was great.

Re: More challenging projects every programmer should try

#209

Post by joycian » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 8:59 PM UTC

drummersbrother wrote: post #179

arendtio wrote: post #177

What I am really missing is some kind of real-time AI. A decade ago, I have coded some bot for an ego-shooter with RTS elements and have learnt so much from it (while having a lot of fun). It starts with basic things like waypoint systems vs. area awareness systems plus the relevant routing algorithms like A*, but goes on to organizing a group of players and finding good strategies. And all of that with a limited tim…

You may be interested in the game Screeps. From their website (name +.com): "It's an open-source game for programmers, wherein the core mechanic is programming your units' AI. You control your colony by writing JavaScript. "

I looked this up and it seems very cool. Do you (or anybody else) know any more of these games or environments that can be controlled by code?

Re: More challenging projects every programmer should try

#210

Post by fergie » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 9:39 PM UTC

watwut wrote: post #172

mukwenhac wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being a programmer doesn't mean one is not creative, those two are not mutually exclusive. Not to mention that one can observe a problem that can be fixed by a way they already know too.

Sure but plenty of people are attracted to programming because they are not creative. Pretending that they don't exist or pretending that everyone is great at everything is not accurate.

No. The definition of "creativity" is to have the desire and ability to create new stuff. Many people express their creativity by creating computer programs.