What is a Lambda?
Could someone provide a good description of what a Lambda is? We have a tag for them and they're on the secrets of C# question, but I have yet to find a good definition and explanation of what they are in the first place. ...
computer-science
Computer Science text book way to do text/xml/whatever parsing.
It's been ratling in my brain for a while. I've had some investigation on Compilers/Flex/Byson and stuff but I never found a good reference that talked in detail about the "parsing stack", or how to go about implementing one. Does anyone know of good references where I could catch up? Edit: I do appreciate all the compiler references,...
Mathematics for Computer Science Students
To cut a long story short, I am a CS student that has received no formal Post-16 Maths education for years. Right now even my Algebra is extremely rusty and I have a couple of months to shape up my skills. I've got a couple of video lectures in my bookmarks, consisting of: Pre-Calculus Algebra Calculus Probability Introduction to Stati...
Vector and Layer Data Structure
I'm working with some code that is confusing me and I'm wondering if I'm just not grokking the data structures. The data I'm working with utilizes vectors and layers. I believe a vector is just a row of data but I'm not sure. Any information you could provide or point me to about the use of these would be very helpful. ...
Way to go from recursion to iteration
I've used recursion quite a lot on my many years of programming to solve simple problems, but I'm fully aware that sometimes you need iteration due to memory/speed problems. So, sometime in the very far past I went to try and find if there existed any "pattern" or text-book way of transforming a common recursion approach to iteration an...
What's a good project for an introduction to A.I.?
So I'm just getting started in exploring A.I. a bit and I'm wondering what a good project would be to help introduce me to the field. An example of the level of complexity I'm looking for would be something like tic-tac-toe, or a bayesian spam filter, or...? For what ever project you suggest it would be helpful if you could also give a ...
Calculating time diff across midnight
This is the one thing I could never get to work. My problem is to detect the end of one day and the start of the next and then splitting the diff into each day. Imagine you want to calculate a pay rate but it has to span across midnight. It also applies to calculating time to run on timed system, or time diff it should've run. ...
What are named pipes?
I know a little bit about this but wanted some more information. What are they and how do they work? Context happens to be SQL Server ...
Unknown significant moments of computing history
Computing as a discipline in its own right (rather than as a discussion of whether it is Mathematics or Physics) is a reasonably young science. Wherever you trace its roots (e.g. Turing's paper in 1936, Babbage's engines, ATLAS, ENIAC or LEO) it's much younger than most modern nation states. I've been programming (using the loosest def...
Online Computer Science articles repository?
When I need some complex algorithm I first check if there's anything relevant already published on the Internet. 10 times out of 10 I'll find that someone already have figured out a solution much smarter than what I would have thought of. Apart from a generic Google search, I use: Citeseer That has a lot of good theoric reports from ...
Starting CompSci Uni next week, what's the best advice you can muster?
What's the one thing you would you tell someone just starting at Uni, or wish someone had told you before you started? [Edit: thanks already for the astounding advice, I won't mark any as accepted because I couldn't choose.] ...
What is Code Coverage and how do YOU measure it?
What is Code Coverage and how do YOU measure it? I was asked this question regarding our automating testing code coverage. It seems to be that outside of automated tools it is more art than science. Anyone have any real world examples of how they use code coverage? ...
What is this called in computer science?
A lot of programming languages and frameworks do/allow/require something that I can't seem to find the name for, even though there probably is one in computer science. What they basically do is bind to a variable/object/class/function by name. Flex example ("selectAll()"): <mx:Button click="selectAll()" label="Select All"/> Mate exa...
Are there any programs to draw and test state machines, turing machines, etc?
When I go back to school after Thanksgiving, I'll be taking a course in CS Theory covering topics such as deterministic and nondeterministic finite state machines, turing machines, pushdown automata and a few other things. However, I haven't found a good application that can produce a visual representation of them as well as testing how ...
Machine Learning, AI, and Soft Computing
What is the difference between these three heavily related fields? Is there one specific whole they are all a part of (aside from CS)? ...
Most Influential CS Class You've Taken
What is the most influential CS class that you've taken? This could mean the one which made you a better programmer, the one which changed the way you think about CS... maybe even the one that made you decide not to major in CS, although I doubt we'll see many of those around here. I have two candidates: One was Computer Systems, where ...
What's the Compiler Book People are talking about when They say the "Dragon" book?
Also is there a better book you'd recommend for learning about compilers, or is that the one to get? ...
Recursion and Big O
I've been working through a recent Computer Science homework involving recursion and big-O notation. I believe I understand this pretty well (certainly not perfectly, though!) But there is one question in particular that is giving me the most problems. The odd thing is that by looking it, it looks to be the most simple one on the homewor...
Function pointers, Closures, and Lambda
I am just now learning about function pointers and as I was readying the K&R chapter on the subject the first thing that hit me was, "Hey, this is kinda like a closure." I knew this assumption is fundamentally wrong somehow and after a search online wasn't really to find any analysis of this comparison. So why are C style function point...
What is an NP-complete problem?
What is an NP-complete problem? Why is it such an important topic in computer science? ...