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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Kurumo's LiveJournal:

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    Sunday, June 28th, 2009
    5:43 pm
    Every programmer, or manager of programmers, should read this:
    http://the-programmers-stone.com/about/
    Tuesday, March 10th, 2009
    1:00 am
    How Benjamin Button got his face

    Stephenson's 'ractives', anyone?
    Saturday, February 28th, 2009
    11:18 pm
    Suppose you are given a language called C--. It is just like C, except
    there is no if, no switch, and no tertiary operator: i.e. no conditionals
    of any kind. Can we write all the same programs in it as in, say, C or C++,
    and if so, how?

    To make the problem more interesting, suppose we also remove all the
    loop constructs?

    I think I will ask this in interviews.
    Wednesday, February 25th, 2009
    12:39 am
    Tales from interviews

    Me: Please describe an algorithm you would use to search for a particular value in a sorted array.
    Candidate (MS in CS): <in fits and starts, describes and writes pseudo code for binary search>
    Me: What is the running time of this algorithm in terms of O-notation?
    Candidate: <brightly> n^2
    Me: <falling of a chair> Pardon?..
    Candidate: no, wait.. That would have to be 2^n
    Me: <chokes on coffee>

    Fini
    Friday, February 13th, 2009
    12:59 am
    A puzzle with a most elegant solution.
    Two people play a game. On your turn, you pick up a number 1 through 9
    without replacement. To win, one needs to collect three numbers that
    sum to 15. Describe the optimal strategy.
    Wednesday, February 11th, 2009
    1:38 am
    Tales from interviews

    Me: Please describe a class design for a deck of cards, say for something like an online casino.
    Candidate: <very quickly produces a design in which Players publicly inherit from Cards>
    Me: ... ?!?..

    Немая сцена
    Sunday, February 8th, 2009
    11:41 pm
    Came upon this. Lots of short interviews with some of the people who made the 20th century.
    Hans Bethe, Mandelbrot, Don Knuth, Gell-Mann, John Wheeler, Josh Maynard Smith, Francis Crick, Edward Teller, Atiyah, etc.
    http://www.peoplesarchive.com/home.jsp
    Wednesday, December 17th, 2008
    2:47 pm

    Observations on interviewing:

    - over 3/4 of all candidates with C/C++ on the resume cannot reverse a linked list in those languages (in place)
    - over 1/3 cannot do it in principle, in any language or by any method, with multiple tries
    - over 1/2 have no concept of how to reverse digits in a number without converting the said number to a string
    - the above holds regardless of the degree; if anything, Masters in Computer Science do worse on average. (I regard MS as a red flag at this point).
    - candidates who declare Java as their preferred programming language in general have a weaker grasp of algorithms and little to no idea of architecture

    :(

    Monday, December 15th, 2008
    1:15 pm

    In Febraury of last year, when I was looking for a job, I passed my resume to somebody at Akamai at a career fair. Yesterday I got a letter from them: "We got your resume and would like to invest time (sic.) in evaluation of your skills." I think it might be some sort of record. A year and ten months.

    Sunday, December 7th, 2008
    5:03 pm
    Who'd have thought it possible.

    "In recent work that is nothing short of spectacular, X. Leroy has developed a
    formally verified compiler for the C programming language."

    Thomas C. Hales, "Formal Proof", Notices of the AMS, December 2008 (55, 11), p. 1377
    Monday, November 24th, 2008
    12:31 am
    A source of morality, indeed.

    Against religion

    I quote: )

    Granted, correlation is not causation, and the statistical analysis in the article is nonexistent. But even the correlations are interesting, and are a touch counterintuitive to people. Also, Jensen, Journal of Religion & Society 8: 1–14.
    Monday, November 10th, 2008
    12:17 pm

    I, for one, welcome our Democratic Overlords.
    Undo

    Thursday, May 8th, 2008
    1:54 am
    Friday, March 7th, 2008
    4:30 pm
    Неплохо сказано о компьютерных шахматах:

    "Writing about a 262-move optimal ‘rook and knight versus two knights’ game [Ken] Thompson
    found in the 6-piece endgames, former championship chess player Tim Krabbé explained:

        Playing over these moves is an eerie experience. They are not human; a grandmaster does
    not understand them any better than someone who has learned chess yesterday. The knights
    jump, the kings orbit, the sun goes down, and every move is the truth. It's like being revealed
    the Meaning of Life, but it's in Estonian. On Thompson's Website, where this and other endgame
    databases can be found, he has named the link to them: 'Play Chess with God.'"

    (отсюда)

    Это более-менее совпадает с моим собственным опытом, но: в партиях, скажем, Крамника против
    Deep Fritz этот эффект либо вовсе отсутствует, либо сильно менее заметен. Несколько гроссмейстеров
    пошли даже на то чтобы сказать что в этих партиях компьютер "passed the chess Turing test":
    игру было невозможно отличить от игры человека. Надо полагать это разница между доказуемо
    оптимальными решениями и heuristic search.
    Friday, February 23rd, 2007
    1:25 am
    ...
    What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason!
    how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how
    express and admirable! in action how like an angel!
    in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the
    world! the paragon of animals!

    http://thrillingwonder.blogspot.com/2007/02/construction-of-worlds-highest-bridge.html
    Monday, July 31st, 2006
    1:35 am
    Monday, July 3rd, 2006
    5:39 pm
    Thursday, June 29th, 2006
    7:58 pm
    Sunday, May 14th, 2006
    11:16 pm
    I have seen all kinds of things on the Internet, but this gave me pause:

    "Need info on neurosurgery for hobbyists."

    (Subject line in a e-book newsgroup.)

    Current Mood: bewildered
    Friday, May 12th, 2006
    2:13 am
    Это мои наблюдения и мысли по поводу ролевых игр, основанные как на "живых", так и на настольных играх в которых я участвовал.

    IMHO )
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