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More challenging projects every programmer should try

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Re: More challenging projects every programmer should try

#31

Post by SilasX »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #13

> it is really simple to create the basic "database". You can start by using the dictionary data structure that comes with whatever programming language you're using and slap a web API on top of it. Better yet: do it in C. There's no "dictionary" object type so you have to make it yourself. You'll soon learn a whole bunch of fallacies about how those "dictionaries" actually work. After you spent a good deal of time d…

Relatedly, I loved microcorruption.com, a RE/CTF challenge where you have to find exploits at the assembly level to bypass a lock. Some of the problems have hashtables implemented in assembly that you have to work through with a debugger, and it forces you say e.g. "okay, that register is storing the number of bits needed to store the [log of the number of] hashtable elements, which is then masked over the hash function output to know what bucket it needs to look in".

Re: More challenging projects every programmer should try

#33

Post by hedora »

azhenley wrote: post #8
ashleyn wrote: post #7

Write a toy compiler for a basic like language, you'll learn about what your languages are actually doing.

Author here. I agree! That was one of the projects from the original project list that I posted a year ago ( https://web.eecs.utk.edu/~azh/blog/challengingprojects.html ). In fact, this summer I wrote a 3-part tutorial series on implementing a BASIC compiler: Let's make a Teeny Tiny compiler ( https://web.eecs.utk.edu/~azh/blog/teenytinycompiler1.html )

Hey! Be more careful when you call things fictitious!

My first program ran on a CHIP-8 machine (COSMAC VIP), though I didn’t realize I was targeting an interpreter and not machine code.

Great series of articles!

Re: More challenging projects every programmer should try

#34

Post by avl999 »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #13

> it is really simple to create the basic "database". You can start by using the dictionary data structure that comes with whatever programming language you're using and slap a web API on top of it. Better yet: do it in C. There's no "dictionary" object type so you have to make it yourself. You'll soon learn a whole bunch of fallacies about how those "dictionaries" actually work. After you spent a good deal of time d…

I disagree with the C advice. If you don't want to rely on higher level language primitives like Dictionaries and so on there is nothing stopping you from rolling out your own implementations of these data structures in a more sane language (Go, Python, Java, Clojure whatever, anything but C). The project is challenging enough without having to fight segfaults and undefined behaviors.

Re: More challenging projects every programmer should try

#35

Post by gjvnq »

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 tried making a bitcoin trading bot and almost all of the money (about 10 bucks, not no big problem).

My main mistake was using the historical trades instead of the historical offers as a testing dataset.

Re: More challenging projects every programmer should try

#36

Post by xamuel »

Here's an open-ended programming project which, in a certain formal sense, spans the entire range of all difficulty levels: write an "intuitive ordinal notation" for as large of an ordinal number as you can.

What is an "intuitive ordinal notation"? Definition: The set of intuitive ordinal notations is the smallest set P of computer programs with the following property. For every computer program p, if, when p is run, all of p's outputs are elements of P, then p is in P.

So "End.", the program which immediately ends with no outputs, is vacuously in P (all of its outputs are in P, because it has no outputs). It notates the ordinal 0. Likewise, "Print(`End.')" is in P, because its sole output, "End.", is in P; it notates the ordinal 1. Likewise, "Print(`Print(End.')')" is in P, notating the ordinal 2. And so on.

The above can be short-circuited: "Let X=`End'; While(True){Print(X); X=`Print(\`'+X+`\')'}". This program outputs "End.", "Print(`End.')", "Print(`Print(`End.')')", and so on forever, all of which are in P, so this program itself is in P. It notates omega, the smallest infinite ordinal.

Here's a library of examples in Python, currently going up to a notation for the ordinal omega^omega: https://github.com/semitrivial/IONs

Re: More challenging projects every programmer should try

#38

Post by azhenley »

eatonphil wrote: post #23

I'd also recommend writing an emulator for real or fake (e.g. CHIP-8) hardware. It seems complicated but the core loop gets pretty simple. It ends up giving you a much better view of both assembly and pointer semantics (useful for better understanding C).

That’s in my original list from last year!

Re: More challenging projects every programmer should try

#39

Post by eatonphil »

azhenley wrote: post #38
eatonphil wrote: post #23

I'd also recommend writing an emulator for real or fake (e.g. CHIP-8) hardware. It seems complicated but the core loop gets pretty simple. It ends up giving you a much better view of both assembly and pointer semantics (useful for better understanding C).

That’s in my original list from last year!

Ah, good call. I missed the link that this was a follow up post.

Re: More challenging projects every programmer should try

#40

Post by sitzkrieg »

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…

same here, aits definitely worth pointing out (as you me tion) simulating execution and realisitic fills (and dont forget rt commissions!) is extremely difficult and also will absolutely kill strategies that casually look profitable
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