quizzical quincunx :: problem-solving

posted at 11:40 on 2009.05.22

I'm now gearing up to tackle the implementation of this specification for an embedded microkernel in the infamous Real-Time Programming course at the University of Waterloo. To share the masochism, our team has started the PsychOS blog. We'll be posting about our exploits - favourable, frustrating, pants-less, or otherwise - there, so keep posted! I'll try to mirror particularly poignant posts here at Quizzical Quincunx as well.

In other news, I've solved We Are The Swarm from Facebook's Engineering Puzzles site. This one is pleasantly devious; out of respect for the puzzle-solving spirit, I'll refrain from posting any hints. Enjoy!

Best Malpractices

posted at 11:54 on 2009.04.08

"I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something." -- Richard Feynman

With that in mind, here's a well-reasoned rant against Best Practices. The IT world is replete with buffoons - programmers, managers, CS students, whatever - who toss around terms like AJAX, ORM, XP/Agile, Web 2.0, RDBMS, DRY, NIH, and OOP without ever pausing to ask the real questions. What do they mean? What do they do? Where do they succeed - and where do they fall short?

Consider this: Google does not follow Best Practices. They solve problems. Period.

At Last!

posted at 09:48 on 2009.02.01

Yeah, I know. Problem 117 is easy. IMHO, it's ranked "harder" than other problems simply because the requisite formulae for many of these questions are easily found using a combination of Wikipedia, MathWorld, and Sloane - which is not to say that the implementation part is always trivial!

So close!

posted at 22:29 on 2009.01.28

98 questions, 2 to go.