Tabs or Spaces?

19 Tuesday Oct 2021

Posted by in CS101

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , , ,

There are many issues that divide programmers: operating systems and editors being two huge ones. I’ve worked on too many platforms to care much about the first one, but I’m a lifelong gvim user.

One of the lesser dividing issues involves the crucial source coding choice: Tabs or Spaces? The issue is both less and more important these days. Less because editors are very capable; more because Python is popular.

Continue reading →

Multiplication Visualized

01 Tuesday Sep 2020

Posted by in Fun

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , ,

On my regular blog I just posted about a Japanese visual multiplication method. It’s a cute trick that ties into the notion of grid multiplication techniques. (In general, multiplication techniques are of some interest due to the Mandelbrot set, which requires multiplying large numbers lots of times.)

It turns out code to generate the patterns was a lot easier than I thought it would be. The hardest part was generating the diagonal summing lines.

Continue reading →

John Conway’s Life

03 Sunday May 2020

Posted by in Fun

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

You may have heard that mathematician John Conway died last April. To his everlasting dismay, most people only know him for his “game” of Life (which he considered trivial and inferior to his real mathematical work). Unfortunately for Conway, his Life game is fascinating.

To honor his passing, I whipped up a Python version that I thought I’d share. Python is about the only language I’ve used a lot in which I’ve never implemented Life, so high time I did, right?

Continue reading →

Python Decorators, part 2

25 Saturday Apr 2020

Posted by in CS101

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,

Last time I began exploring Python decorators, which are a way of having one function “wrap” another function. Because the wrapper has access to both the input parameters and the return value, it can modify these values (unbeknownst to the inner function).

This time I pick up where I left off by exploring decorators modifying return values, decorators that take parameters, and decorators in classes.

Continue reading →

Python Decorators, part 1

24 Friday Apr 2020

Posted by in CS101

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , ,

I’ve been playing around with what Python calls decorators. They’re a built-in way of implementing Aspect-Oriented Programming techniques in Python. In fact, they’re quite powerful.

Since they aren’t a common language feature, they can be a little confusing at first, so I thought I’d try my hand at laying out how they work.

Continue reading →