A minimalist developer blog.
This article should be read with the opening scene of Westworld in mind. What if Plato and Leibniz were right? Maybe some mystics were right as well. As above, so below . Everything would fit nicely if the oscillatory behaviour of nature were more than a mathematical construct. Maybe mathematics is ontological. What if sinusoids are not here merely to follow and approximate a shape, but to…
Scroll inside the stage with the mouse wheel or with your finger. It is only a machine, but it already understands the gesture. Have fun! Posted by like comments share comments close share close Thank you for sharing. Your unpaid growth work has been successfully appreciated. Swipe for the next officially blessed distraction. dopamine levels Moloch The Brain is unhappy. Wait, don't scroll further…
While reading some classic poetry, I accidentally found Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s A Mathematical Problem : On a given finite line Which must no way incline; To describe an equi– –lateral Tri– –A, N, G, L, E. I have to admit, the poem is not the easiest to read (because of its deliberately old-fashioned phrasing) especially for a non-native English speaker like me. Still, I…
Weekend articles should be lighter and fun. Not everything has to be an argument, a deep dive, or a small your average frustration disguised as an essay. Sometimes I just want to build a tiny piece of nonsense, the sort of harmless interactive bullshit that feels vaguely old internet and slightly very unnecessary. So this name generator is exactly that: Fill in the form below to discover who your…
A silly story is easier to remember This article is about “a vision” that I have. I like to “visualise” stuff, and some of my favourite articles that I wrote have some form of visualisations:
…symmetry isn’t just a preference for “pretty” shapes. Contents Introduction The HM-AM-GM-QM Inequality The two circles The Semicircle The Container The 3D container The Sum of Squares Inequality Nesbitt’s Inequality Conclusion Introduction While I was randomly browsing the web, I came across this nice picture: Roland H. Eddy, Memorial University of Newfoundland,…
Some jokes write themselves. In our case, the electrician wrote it. Let me give you a little context. Summers in Bucharest can get brutally hot, and when it gets that hot, your brain simply stops functioning. So on weekends, I prefer the cool breeze of the lakes surrounding our capital city. Bucharest was actually built on a swampy area, so lakes are practically everywhere. One of the most amazing…
These thoughts were drafted during a night, a few months ago. I didn’t want to publish them then because they felt like an emotional take on something that still seemed remote. Today, I found the notes again and realized they don’t feel remote anymore. They feel like the present. I’m not a Luddite; quite the opposite. But I am convinced that in the long run, we stand to lose far more…
It’s 2026, and my interest in writing was at a new all-time low. Naturally, instead of actually writing, I did what any self-respecting developer does: I spent a week migrating the entire blog from the venerable Jekyll to Hugo. Does this count as programming sophisticated procrastination? This isn’t exactly a spectacular feat. A lot of people are jumping ship nowadays, usually for…
Contents Disclaimer Introduction Inequations vs. Inequalities Weak Inequalities vs. Strict inequalities Being playful with algebraic identities The AM-GM Inequality Cyclic and Symmetrical Inequalities Grouping and Splitting Terms Muirhead’s Theorem The mean inequality chain The weighted AM-GM inequality The power of substitutions Ravi Substitutions Nesbitt’s Inequality The…
How it started This story began, unexpectedly, on Facebook in a math-focused group. A teacher asked the group to determine the value of: $\lfloor 3^{\sqrt{3}}\rfloor$ without using a calculator. Naturally, the challenge was to prove whether $\lfloor 3^{\sqrt{3}}\rfloor=6$ or $\lfloor 3^{\sqrt{3}}\rfloor=7$ (my intuition leaned toward 7). Eventually, the most convincing solution, proposed by Mihai…
When I was a young student (around 12), my math teacher had a unique requirement: students had to not only solve math problems but also compose them. This unconventional approach encouraged us to think creatively and critically… or not. While the task was not mandatory, some classmates and I embraced the challenge of developing geometry and algebra exercises from scratch. I am not sure how…
In the landscape of the Romanian 10th-grade Math Olympiad, logarithms are a distinct and recurring theme. While they don’t dominate the entire curriculum, a problem involving them is bound to appear, often requiring a deep understanding of algebraic inequalities and identities. This collection is curated specifically as a training ground for that level. The problems below are a mix of the…
This article will be part of an extensive series in which I plan to explore various aspects of Fourier Mathematics . I will take notes, create some visuals (a good pretext to learn more about graphics), and hope that it will be helpful to anyone looking for a clear, visual introduction to these concepts. The article has yet to be thoroughly reviewed by anyone other than me, so I put it online,…
System Log: Sinusoidal Tetris Let's play Tetris, but with a twist. No geometrical figures will fall from the sky . Instead, you control a sinusoid , defined by: \[ f(x) = A \cdot \sin(\omega x + \varphi) \]
Before we begin, I’d like to clarify that the project ideas I am about to suggest are mainly intended for those who are interested in exploring new areas of knowledge. However, it’s important to note that most of these ideas may not be relevant to today’s job market. If you’re looking to add something impressive to your portfolio for recruitment purposes, it might be worth…
Intro This article is a continuation of my previous selection of non-trivial algebra problems from the Romanian Math Olympiad for high-school students. However, this time I have included a few harder problems from the National Phase that would definitely provide a challenge to any reader. Personally, I found problems 5. and 9. to be the most difficult. The Problems Problem 00172 25 Mar, 2024 Find…
In this short article, I will discuss a cute mathematical problem that I discovered while reading “Polya’s Footsteps: Miscellaneous Mathematical Expositions” by the Canadian mathematician Ross Honsberger . If you’re not familiar with Honsberger’s work, he is a well-known author in the field of recreational mathematics . Even the legendary Edsger W. Dijkstra referred…
Introduction This is a “follow-up” to the previous article: “The math exams of my life” , as some readers were curious to see some examples of Math Olympiad exercises. This is a selection of cute , non-trivial algebra problems (with a hint of number theory ) compiled from the Romanian Math Olympiad (regional phase or faza judeteana ) for 8th, 9th, and 10th graders (13-15…
The system is flawed The Romanian public education system, which, by the way, is free for everyone (Universities included), has its flaws. However, it is still one of the best in the world for making a handful of kids proficient in mathematics and sciences. It’s a system of contrasts. On the one hand, you have a bunch of Elite Schools and Universities that put a lot of emphasis on scientific…
There’s this famous video on YouTube featuring Richard Feynman and a reporter. The reporter asks the physicist: “Why do two magnets repel or attract one another?” Feynman, instead of directly schooling the audience on magnetism, electricity, electromagnetic fields, electrons, ferromagnetic materials, Maxwell’s Equations, and everything in between, goes on a brilliant small tirade about Aliens and…
This post is satire. It may also not make too much sense. Today I’ve seen this picture on my LinkedIn wall: And it triggered me badly. There are people in my network who are highly sensitive to the divine nature of numbers. As a math enthusiast, I just don’t get it. So, for all the people believing in numerology , let’s find the numbers that carry highly amplified and/or…
Contents Introduction Number systems A certain symmetry and patterns Numbers and Data Types in C Transforming numbers from decimal to other number systems (binary, hexadecimal, etc.) Bitwise operations Bitwise AND Bitwise OR Bitwise XOR Bitwise NOT Left Shift Right Shift Negative numbers and their binary representation Pitfalls to avoid when using bitwise operations Mandatory Computer Science…
I recently stumbled upon an article about the Weierstrass Function , which led me to another article about Pathological Objects in mathematics—meaning functions, numbers, etc., that have deviant , irregular, or counterintuitive properties. There was a time when even the introduction of $0$ broke the mathematics of the day. At first, $0$ was highly pathological . For example, the 7th-century…
… actually you can use only 2, but this will make your life a little more miserable. Contents Introduction The code The memory layout map vars shape The game loop The function that moves the snake: The function that displays the snake After the macros expand Final thoughts Introduction After not implementing a game of Snake in ages, I decided to do my best today, but with some strange and…
Contents Introduction The code Running the sample blog Adding a new blog post to the sample blog How everything works The model and a neat pre-processor trick The server Conclusions Discussion Introduction Recently, while browsing lobste.rs , I had the chance to stumble upon this beautiful article , titled: my website is one binary . It was an idea crazy enough (in a positive way) to try it myself…
The current article won’t be an exhaustive technical analysis of Gradle but more like a spontaneous rant. Firstly, the time I am willing to allocate to learning a build tool will always be strictly limited. Secondly, I try to be fair, so the list of things I expect from a build tool is quite small: Let me list a few dependencies by using a purely descriptive approach. Please give me a stable…
This article explains a straightforward approach for generating Perfect Hash Functions , and using them in tandem with a Map<K,V> implementation called ReadOnlyMap<K,V> . It assumes the reader is already familiar with concepts like hash functions and hash tables. If you want to refresh your knowledge on these two topics, I recommend you read some of my previous articles: Implementing Hash Tables…
This article assumes the reader is already familiar with the C programming language and some basic concepts concerning hash functions. The target audience (as is often the case on my blog) is undergrad CS students or seasoned developers who, just like me, haven’t learned about Bloom Filters during their University years. Introduction If you just want to jump directly into the code, check out…
The book Life of Pi , written in 2001 by Canadian author Yann Martel , tells the story of a young Indian boy fascinated by philosophy, spirituality, and religious syncretism from an early age. After a devastating shipwreck on his way to the Promised Land (Canada), he survives 227 days ($22/7 \approx 3.14 \approx \pi$) on a lifeboat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. To make things spicier, he has…
This tutorial is intended for intermediate C developers who want to get some coding practice and, in the process, gain valuable insights into low-level programming and how (some) Virtual Machines operate under the hood. The reader should already be comfortable with bitwise operations, hexadecimal notation, pointers, function pointers, C macros, and basic standard library functions (e.g., fwrite…
The intended audience for this article is undergrad students who already have a good grasp of Java, or seasoned Java developers who would like to explore an in-depth analysis of various hash table implementations that use Open Addressing . The reader should be familiar with Java generics, collections, basic data structures, hash functions, and bitwise operations. Contents Introduction Standard…
Table of contents Contents Table of contents Code Introduction C++ ( unordered_map ) Java ( HashMap ) Python ( dict ) Performance: Why Size Doesn’t Matter Hash Functions Hash Collisions What makes a “Good” Hash Function? Families of Hashing Functions Division hashing Multiplicative hashing Hashing strings The Rolling Hash Template djb2 sdbm Reducing collisions: Finalizers More…
Contents Introduction Working with an UCI-enabled engine from the command line Installing Stockfish (and Leela Zero) Listing supported options Changing an option Analyzing a position Writing the Java UCI Client library Opening and closing the engine process Sending commands to the engine Example: Getting the best move Example: Retrieving the 10 best moves Going further References Introduction I…
mapneat is a library I’ve written a long time ago. I am biased. Introduction Following my previous article , I wanted to expand on the capabilities of the mapneat library. In this tutorial, I will show you how to transform an existing XML source into a specifically structured JSON format. The Source XML We will start with a customer record that includes nested visit data and attributed email…
mapneat is a library I’ve written a long time ago. I am biased. Introduction One of the most common challenges I’ve encountered in Software Engineering is data manipulation: taking a raw data structure, applying business logic, restructuring it, and finally serializing it into a JSON format for external consumption. mapneat is designed for exactly this purpose. It provides a…
Contents Introduction Using QR Decomposition to Determine Eigenvalues Implementing the Naive Algorithm Improving the Algorithm: Practical QR with Shifts More Improvements: The Hessenberg Form But what about the Eigenvectors? References Introduction In my last two articles, I explored some fundamental topics in linear algebra: QR Decomposition , linear transformations , and Eigenvalues/Eigenvectors…
Contents Introduction Think of matrices as functions Matrix transformations Linear Transformations Eigenvalues and Eigenvectors Why are they “special”? Why are they important? Where to go next Introduction There are rumors saying Computer Vision Engineers consider Eigenvalues and Eigenvectors the single most important concept(s) in linear algebra. I am not 100% sure about that, but I…
pysert (lowercase ‘p’) is a python utility designed to generate random SQL INSERT statements from predefined templates. While its primary focus is SQL, its template-driven nature allows it to generate almost any structured format, including JSON , XML , or YAML . If you need a more robust, production-grade Java solution, I recommend checking out MockNeat , which offers similar…
Contents Disclaimer Math, math The Library Source Code The data: nml_matrix Breakdown of the Structure A Note on Memory Layout Allocating / De-allocating memory for the nml_mat matrix Implementation: nml_mat_new() Implementation: nml_mat_free() Expanding the API Creating a Random Matrix Generating Values within an Interval Creating a square matrix Creating an identity matrix Creating a matrix from…
Java annotations are syntactic meta-information that can be added to your source code. You can annotate classes, methods, variables, parameters, and even packages . The primary advantage of annotations over Javadoc tags is that they can be reflective. This means the information remains available to the Virtual Machine at runtime via the Java Reflection API . Modern frameworks like Spring rely…
Even though Java 7 introduced a low-level API to watch for file system changes (see the article here ), you also have the option of using the Commons IO library from the Apache Foundation , specifically the org.apache.commons.io.monitor package. The first step is to define the location that we are going to monitor: public static final String FOLDER =…
A list of best practices for writing bash scripts: Use a portable shebang In computing, a shebang is the character sequence consisting of the characters number sign and exclamation mark (#!) at the beginning of a script. (source wikipedia ) Use: #!/usr/bin/env bash instead of #!/bin/bash bash can have various locations Eg.: /sbin/bash , /usr/local/bin/bash , /usr/bin/bash Note: This is not only to…
Contents Introduction The Binary Heap Why use a Heap? The code Defining the data Implementation Testing Introduction In Computer Science, a Priority Queue is an abstract data type similar to a standard Queue, but with a critical distinction: every element has an associated priority . In this structure, elements with higher priorities are dequeued and served before those with lower priorities,…
Contents Introduction The Algorithm Implementations Scala Python Haskell Introduction One of the earlier challenges from Programming Praxis was the RPN Calculator. The goal is to create a module that evaluates Reverse Polish Notation (RPN) expressions. RPN is a mathematical notation where operators follow their operands, eliminating the need for parentheses. This makes expressions easier for…
Introduction If you’ve ever tried to write your own calculator, you’ve probably needed a way to convert mathematical expressions written in the usual infix notation into Reverse Polish Notation (RPN) . This post walks through that conversion using the classic shunting-yard algorithm , and shows a (hopefully) compact Java implementation. Before we jump into the algorithm, let’s…
Update (2026): This was the first 'real article' I ever wrote. It actually dates back to before 2010, though I didn't publish it until later. I’ve made a few tweaks here and there, but the original 'old code' remains. Please judge it kindly! Contents Introduction Generic Data Structures Using the C Preprocessor What is a Macro? Example: Object-like Macros Example: Function-like Macros Token…
My first blog post, in which I am writing Hello World! . #include <stdio.h> int main () { long long h = 0x0A646C726F57206FLL ; long long e = 0x6C6C6548 ; printf ( '%.4s%s' , ( char * ) & e, ( char * ) & h); return 0 ; }