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Bosker Blog
Personal blog · bosker.wordpress.commathprogramming
Bosker Blog is a personal blog at bosker.wordpress.com about math and programming. Since 2011, 14 different Hacker News readers have linked it 27 times, most often “Editing text is the opposite of handling exceptions”. The last post was in 2018, but the archive is still widely read.
Miscellaneous maundering
Most-linked posts?
- Editing text is the opposite of handling exceptions3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2012-05-10
- Beyond Bézier Curves (2013)2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2016-04-01
- Computing Fibonacci numbers using Binet’s formula2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-07-28
- I hate the Pumping Lemma (2013)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-11-12
What Hacker News says?
It’s tangential to this thread, but since it’s a topic close to my heart: If you just implement this formula using doubles then it only gives the correct answer for input values up to about 70. Yes it’s pretty fast, but a static table of the first 70 Fibonacci numbers would be even faster. If you’re only interested in the first few dozen Fibonacci numbers then it doesn’t really matter what algorithm you use, as long…
Comment linking /2011/07/27/computing-fibonacci-numbers-using-binet%E2%80%99s-formula/
on “Node-fib: Fast non-blocking fibonacci server”Submitted I hate the Pumping Lemma as a story · 167 points
HN discussionLook up Raph Levien’s Ph.D thesis about “spiro” curves (a.k.a. cornu or Euler spirals). He not only proposes a pretty neat type of curve to use, which affords some nice UIs, but also does a great job detailing the history of splines, including other types of smooth “minimum energy” curves, IKARUS splines, Hobby splines (used by METAFONT), etc. http://www.levien.com/phd/phd.html [I’m somewhat surprised that the Pomax…
Comment linking /2013/11/13/beyond-bezier-curves/
on “A Primer on Bézier Curves (2011)”Submitted "The worst algorithm in the world?" as a story · 161 points
HN discussionHere's an argument that derivatives make the pumping lemma for regular languages much more understandable: https://bosker.wordpress.com/2013/08/18/i-hate-the-pumping-l...
Comment linking /2013/08/18/i-hate-the-pumping-lemma/
on “Derivatives of Regular Expressions (2007)”Submitted Beyond Bézier Curves (2013) as a story · 132 points
HN discussionThis was linked to on (yet another) Fibonacci post: http://bosker.wordpress.com/2011/07/27/computing-fibonacci-n... and gives a somewhat better bound, and some performance tests.
Comment linking /2011/07/27/computing-fibonacci-numbers-using-binet%E2%80%99s-formula/
on “On calculating Fibonacci numbers in C”Submitted The Prisoner's Dilemma: a summary, and new advances as a story · 88 points
HN discussionSimilar examples: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9022021 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1315551 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10317224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9645845 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10574895 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhGI-GqAK9c https://bosker.wordpress.com/2013/03/13/adrift-is-np-complet... https://arxiv.org/abs/1106.2104 https://nadamhu.wordpress.com/2013…
Comment linking /2013/03/13/adrift-is-np-complete/
on “TrackMania is NP-complete”Submitted Editing text is the opposite of handling exceptions as a story · 72 points
HN discussionHere is a question that’s puzzling me. Since this thread has already dropped off the front page, and it probably won’t be seen by many people, I’ve also posted it at http://bosker.wordpress.com/2011/07/31/something-i-don’t-und... The homomorphic encryption techniques seem to allow the computation of arbitrary polynomials over various finite rings, and – at least in everything I’ve read – it’s always treated as obvio…
Comment linking /2011/07/31/something-i-don%E2%80%99t-understand-about-homomorphic-encryption/
on “Can Homomorphic Encryption be Practical?”Submitted Something I don’t understand about homomorphic encryption as a story · 28 points
HN discussionMy take on computing Fibonacci numbers using Binet’s formula: http://bosker.wordpress.com/2011/07/27/computing-fibonacci-n... The short version: it's harder than people often think to do reliably (because you need arbitrary-precision floating-point operations); and, when you do, it turns out to be slower than integer methods.
Comment linking /2011/07/27/computing-fibonacci-numbers-using-binet%E2%80%99s-formula/
on “A program to compute the nth Fibonacci number”Submitted On Editing Text (Operational Transforms from Category Theory) as a story · 13 points
HN discussionSubmitted The algebra of Unix command substitution as a story · 9 points
HN discussionSubmitted Editing text is like exception handling in reverse as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted Adrift is NP-complete as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Computing Fibonacci numbers using Binet’s formula as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted I hate the Pumping Lemma (2013) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Beyond Bézier Curves (2013) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Government Statistical Service’s terrible spreadsheet advice as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Beyond Bézier curves as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted The worst algorithm in the world? - investigating complexity as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Something all bash scripters need to know (and most of us don’t) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Counting coins as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Something all bash scripters need to know (and most of us don’t) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Computing Fibonacci numbers using Binet’s formula as a story · 1 points
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