On The Margins

Monday August 01, 2005

[ Mathematics ] Information Theory

Lucent has a nice little page on the "who" and "what" of information theory, and there is a little course on information theory hosted at Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge.

2005-08-01 21:53:20.0 -- Comments [2] ; Permalink ; Trackback.

[ Personal ] A Poem

I just discovered that, besides the short entry on bicycling in Santa Cruz, I've also written a poem about Santa Cruz.

I had posted it as a comment to Dango's weblog entry, and I quote it here again:

Once a forgotten town with ocean-blue eyes,
Full of fog, rain, clear skies and redwood trees,
And the smell of the rain on the dirt and the leaves,
The roughness of the earth's skin,
And the ocean waves beating softly on the shores at night,
And a heart beating with life,
Once, a town in drunken walk of a sleepless night.

It is rather odd how we forget some of what we write, as we move on from weblog entry to weblog entry. People who write essays and books that have staying power keep returning to those books and essays. We may have a little gem, put it in a shell, and let it drift in the ocean of the web. If it returns to us, it may simply be a new, accidental find.

2005-08-01 19:05:12.0 -- Comments [0] ; Permalink ; Trackback.

[ Code ] Great Programmers

The criteria that identify a great programmer vary—some times speed being the objective, other times clarity, reuse or extensibility.

One of my own most important criterion has to do with succinctness.

A programmer is great (in a given programming language) if s/he can write the shortest program (in that language) that is at least as effective as all other programs in achieving a certain task. S/he writes the program in such a way that little commentary is necessary. A programmer is great if a look at the program says what it does.

Doing with little commentary is actually possible in higher-level languages such as Java. Some length might be given up to make the program more "clear" but that juggle is what can destroy good programs if taken too far to any extreme.

Good, tight programs are self-explanatory because they do not have spurious material.

O.K. Just as I was writing this, a friend wrote back and said: "For me, a truly great progammer is the one who everyone but (her/his)self thinks they are one"—beauty in the eye of the beholder.

2005-08-01 16:16:51.0 -- Comments [0] ; Permalink ; Trackback.