Josh Wieder

Below is an example of how to implement a Linked List function using C. Note that the example below does not include a main function or preprocessor imperatives.

This question came up on Stack Exchange ; Using C, how can you write filenames dynamically using an iterative variable loop? Or in English, you want to write some stuff to a bunch of different files, and have those files named in a logical manner like file1.file, file2.file, file3.file, ... etc. The answer is pretty simple, but a bit of a mind-bender when you are first getting started. I was also pretty astonished that all of the accepted "solutions" to the problem failed to compile. This is a pretty big issue on these programming solution websites. I think the reason for the problem is there are two groups of people: There are the people who want other people to think they can fix stuff. Then there are the people who can fix stuff. The two groups, obviously, have some overlap: people who can fix stuff and who want others to know about it. But there is also a statistically significant portion of both groups that do not overlap - people who can fix stuff who don't care

Stanford created a strange, claymation character named Binky to teach students about the concept of Pointers in programming. Watch the video and share in the severe WTF-ness that comes along with it.

Watch a pre-Presidency Obama chat with Eric Schmidt of Google about sorting algorithms. Oh, how you've changed, Barry.

The video below provides a graphical display of a number of different sorting algorithms at work. Whats unique about this video, is that in addition to the graphical display, each operation in the sorting algorithm has also been assigned a tone - in other words, this video lets you hear the algorithms as well as see them! While counter-intuitive, the "song" that the tones play can provide insight into how the algorithm is working; at least for me, it is easier to distinguish small differences using sound than it is to do so using the often frenetic, fast moving images in sorting visualizations.  Check it out for yourself!

What does it mean for an algorithm to be "fast" or "efficient"? When we say an algorithm is fast, we are not referring to an explicitly notation in time, like seconds or minutes. There is a distinction here because of the distinction between hardware and software - performance of a program in real time can be drastically impacted by the hardware it is running on. In order to account for this distinction, while still providing an objective measurement for the efficiency of a program, computer scientists rely on Asymptotic Measurement and a notation format called Big O Notation to describe such measurements. The formal description as a formula is as follows: f(x) ∈ g(x) x o C f(x) ≤ C • g(x) x > x o In less theoretical terms; as the size of your input increases toward infinity, how does the runtime of your program grow? For example, imagine counting the number of characters in a string in the most simple way, by reading each character and summi

Looking for an apache log visualization program recently, I came across logstalgia. It turns your log files into a game of Pong between your web server and the internet, with each new request being the ball going back and forth! So cool.