• Home
  • About
    • About The Coder
    • Language List
  • The Rules
    • Rule #1: Clarity Trumps Everything
    • Rule #2: Source Code is for Humans
    • Rule #3: Don’t Ignore Warnings
    • Rule #4: Comment As You Go!
    • Rule #5: Always Use Parentheses
  • CS-101
  • Python-101
  • Guestbook

The Hard-Core Coder

~ I can't stop writing code!

The Hard-Core Coder

Category Archives: Fun

Interesting projects.

Adventures in Address Vector Space

10 Friday May 2019

Posted by Wyrd Smythe in Fun

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Python code, vector math, vector space

Lately I’ve been exploring the idea of a vector space with a large number of dimensions (but few degrees of freedom). A model was presented with five degrees of freedom in 500 dimensions (neurons, as it happens).

The question is, given the axes are bit-level, does normal vector manipulation semantics make sense. My contention is it has severe problems.

Continue reading →

Number Games #1

22 Friday Mar 2019

Posted by Wyrd Smythe in Fun

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Collatz conjecture, multiplicative persistence, Python code

This is a companion post to the Math Games #1 post on my main blog.

Here I present some code (Python, of course) for exploring the first two games, multiplicative persistence and the Collatz conjecture.

Continue reading →

So Random!

01 Tuesday Jan 2019

Posted by Wyrd Smythe in Fun, Python

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Python code, random

To ring in the new year I thought I’d play around with an old friend from my earliest programming days, a random text generator. Back then (over 30 years ago), but a little bit always, a good way to practice programming is by working on small, relatively easy, but still fun, programs.

Simple games are common choice, but not the only one. (I’ve probably written a version of Mastermind in every programming language I know.) Another fun choice is various image or text generators (or processors). Random text generators, in particular, offer a range of complexity depending on your taste and time.

Continue reading →

Good Ol’ BASIC

13 Saturday Aug 2016

Posted by Wyrd Smythe in Fun

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

BASIC, free verse, poetry

Here’s a free verse ode to my very first computer programming language, good old BASIC:

Continue reading →

Rare Languages

26 Tuesday Jul 2016

Posted by Wyrd Smythe in Fun

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Algol, BASIC, C++, computer humor, computer languages, Forth, humor, Lisp, programming language, valley girl

Cleaning out some old boxes of papers, I came across one of those humor bits that circulate in any profession. Back in the day, it was usually by fax. Then it was email, and now Tweets and other social platforms. (The song remains the same.)

This one concerned “rare” (i.e. made up) languages loosely based on existing languages. The humor depends, mostly, on recognizing parodied languages and certain other topical references (like “Valley Girls”).

In other words, a lot of the funny has sailed, but I found parts of it cute enough to record here…

Continue reading →

Blast From the Past #1

19 Tuesday Jul 2016

Posted by Wyrd Smythe in Fun

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

email, old time stuff, SMTP, text file, upload

In the process of cleaning out boxes of old paperwork, I found this company memo, circa early 1980s, that describes a “simpler” way to send email. At the time, email systems were mainframe-based text systems you logged onto and typed at — actually not terribly unlike the web-based email systems today.

The memo reminds me of how it was back then and of how far we’ve come since. Here it is, reproduced as is:

Continue reading →

Python Pi

14 Monday Mar 2016

Posted by Wyrd Smythe in Fun, Python

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

digits of pi, pi, Pi Day, Python code

For Pi Day I published a post on my main blog, Logos Con Carne. Here is the Python code behind the data generated in that post.

Continue reading →

Bits, Bytes, & Chuncs

22 Saturday Aug 2015

Posted by Wyrd Smythe in Fun

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

1990, 24th century, chunc, dchunc, Exabyte, future computers, Gigabyte, Megabyte, Petabyte, qchunc, Star Trek, Terabyte, USENET

What follows is the text of a piece I wrote back May of 1990 in a Star Trek USENET group. There is some minor editing for clarity. Given that 64 bits seems common now, the projections may need some adjustment!

Continue reading →

My Ideal System v.1

27 Saturday Jun 2015

Posted by Wyrd Smythe in Fun, Opinion

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

F/S, file system, O/S, operating system, XML

I got into software in the late 1970s, so my first couple of decades involved lots of low-level systems and designs. My world had a lot of assembly code, interrupt handlers, and driver routines. I can’t say I miss living in that realm, but it’s still fun to revisit sometimes.

A rare place that still happens is when I get to thinking about how I might design an operating system should I ever chose to (these days a dubious and foolish choice, at best).

Continue reading →

I Have a Spelling Checker

27 Friday Jun 2014

Posted by Wyrd Smythe in Fun

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Friday, funny poetry, humor, poetry, spell check

These days it seems like spell checkers exist in almost everything. Word processing software has had them a long time, although in the early days you had to invoke the spell check function. These days software  handily underlines misspelled words in real-time (with sometimes an advanced function we can invoke).

It always struck me as pretty lame how people (well, let’s be honest: managers) would present PowerPoint documents in important meetings with the red jagged “you misspelled this” underline sprinkled throughout their document.  What exactly did they think that meant?

But enough about managers. It’s Friday and time for some fun, so here’s an old, old poem about spelling checkers…

Continue reading →

← Older posts
Newer posts →
Follow The Hard-Core Coder on WordPress.com

The Posts

  • 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 Synchronization Problem
  • Python Generators, part 3

The Topics

  • Blog (4)
  • CS101 (35)
  • Fun (26)
  • Interesting (1)
  • Opinion (12)
  • Python (23)
  • Stories (15)

The Month

June 2022
M T W T F S S
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
27282930  
« Mar    

The Past

Posts

RSS Feed

Comments

RSS Feed

Enter your email address to follow The Hard-Core Coder and get email when there is a new post.

The Main Blog

Visit Logos con carne

Lots of wyrds... with meat!

The Author

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.

View Full Profile →

Create a website or blog at WordPress.com

  • Follow Following
    • The Hard-Core Coder
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • The Hard-Core Coder
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar