Last time, we talked about how anonymous functions could be created in most any language that supports first-class functions. In brief, we discussed how a function definition can be used as an expression in these languages, stored in a local variable, or passed back as a return value from another function. The one key piece [...]
Think back to some of your earliest programming days. Unless you first learned LISP or the like (bless your little heart), you probably learned on an imperative programming language like C, PASCAL or BASIC. I say you learned “on” a language, because this initial experience shapes our idea of what a computer can and can’t [...]
It’s widely believed that there’s such a thing as a “trade secret” in software development: some algorithm or data structure that makes your product better than all the others in your industry, and that you shouldn’t reveal it to your competition or else they’ll steal it and out-compete you. Our industry is rife with NDAs, [...]
One of the key skills that any software developer needs is a keenly developed ability to solve problems. I don’t just mean big problems, but little, well-defined problems like finding a specific item in a collection or sorting a collection. In my case, I find myself frequently trying to optimize my morning search for a [...]
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