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The Hard-Core Coder

~ I can't stop writing code!

The Hard-Core Coder

Category Archives: Fun

Interesting projects.

The Last Bug

26 Friday Aug 2022

Posted by Wyrd Smythe in Fun

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

computer humor, funny poetry, humor, old time stuff, poetry

Recently I posted an oldie from the last century. Here’s another from the deep time layers of my file system. It’s a poetic parable any programmer can relate to.

Think of it as the programmer’s version of Sisyphus.

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Bits Bytes Chips Clocks

03 Thursday Mar 2022

Posted by Wyrd Smythe in Fun

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

computer humor, funny poetry, humor, old time stuff, poetry

It’s been a while since I posted here, many balls in the fire and irons in the air, so I thought I’d dig into my archives for an oldie, albeit one more of tin than of gold.

This one comes from a 1995 email from a co-worker who was forwarding something cute she’d found in a Delphi Forum.

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Building a Turing Machine

10 Friday Dec 2021

Posted by Wyrd Smythe in Fun, Python

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

modeling, Python code, simulation, Turing Machine

I’m not sure how I got to thinking about Turing Machines (TMs). I was going through some files recently and spent some time looking at busy-beaver.c (from 2017 according to the file date). It contains an implementation of a TM. But something else got me speculating about my own implementation; I just don’t recall what.

I decided to actually write it when it occurred to me that I could use a Python generator to implement the Turing Machine tape. Sadly, I didn’t think of it in time for the trilogy I just published about Python generators (part 1, part 2, part 3).

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A Simple DL Parser

10 Wednesday Nov 2021

Posted by Wyrd Smythe in Fun, Python

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

computer code, language design, little programming language, Python code, recursive descent parser

Last time I introduced a general Definition Language (DL) I created for defining structured information. The end goal was an extension of DL, called Data Definition Language (DDL), intended for defining memory and file formats. It was intended for tools that examine that data, allowing them more knowledgeable output than a raw hex dump.

I mentioned that DL has been on my mind lately, and as it turns out I spent the day yesterday writing a DL parser in Python.

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Playing with Polynomials

01 Monday Nov 2021

Posted by Wyrd Smythe in Fun, Python

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

computer code, math, Python code

I haven’t put nearly the energy into this blog as I have my main blog, Logos Con Carne. My intentions are good, but somehow I never seem to get around to posting here. (It’s certainly not due to lack of interest.)

In an attempt to get more in the habit, I thought I’d write about some simple fun I had recently with a class for calculating polynomials. It was inspired by a lesson from a set of really fun Python tutorial YouTube videos.

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Multiplication Visualized

01 Tuesday Sep 2020

Posted by Wyrd Smythe in Fun, Python

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Cartesian product, computer code, Japanese multiplication method, math, multiplication, Pillow (PIL fork), Python code

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 →

Square Root of 2

15 Friday May 2020

Posted by Wyrd Smythe in Fun

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

math, Python code

This post contains some simple code for calculating the square root of 2 and then generating the bits of the value.

It’s a companion to a post on my other blog.

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Life With Class

07 Thursday May 2020

Posted by Wyrd Smythe in Fun, Python

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

computer code, Conway's Life game, John Conway, program, Python code

Last time I showed you the functions necessary for Life — for John Conway’s game of Life, that is. We ended up with a set of functions you can use to generate frames of a Life session.

This time I’ll show you an object-oriented version (a Life class) along with some other tweaks to make things look nicer.

Continue reading →

John Conway’s Life

03 Sunday May 2020

Posted by Wyrd Smythe in Fun, Python

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

computer code, Conway's Life game, John Conway, program, Python code

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 →

The Playfair Cipher

27 Sunday Oct 2019

Posted by Wyrd Smythe in Fun

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

cipher, computer code, Python code, secret codes, substitution cipher

Earlier this month, on my other blog, I wrote about the Playfair Cipher, a polygraphic substitution cipher invented by Sir Charles Wheatstone in 1854.

At the time I mused about writing some Python to automate using the cipher, and now I’ve done that, so here it is:

Continue reading →

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The Posts

  • Python String Translate
  • The Last Bug
  • Regular Expressions
  • Bits Bytes Chips Clocks
  • Loving the Lambda
  • Failure Tales
  • Naming Things (redux)
  • Calculating Entropy (in Python)
  • Building a Turing Machine
  • Python Tokenize

The Topics

  • Blog (4)
  • CS101 (35)
  • Fun (27)
  • Interesting (1)
  • Opinion (12)
  • Python (24)
  • Stories (15)

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Wyrd Smythe

Wyrd Smythe

The canonical fool on the hill watching the sunset and the rotation of the planet and thinking what he imagines are large thoughts.

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