eric the fruitbat http://www.cogitolingua.net/blog Sounding out the Noosphere. Fri, 03 Feb 2012 23:40:56 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en The Good IR: Other Control Flow Structures In my last post on The Good IR, I had arrived at a representation with two invariants:

Only BasicBlock’s carry information about the ControlFlowGraph; No other edges are allowed between BasicBlocks. All BasicBlocks end with a control transfer Instruction.

I focused that post solely on the if-then-else control flow structure. I would now like to [...]]]> http://www.cogitolingua.net/blog/2012/02/01/the-good-ir-other-control-flow-structures/ Transforming Heuristics Many of the real problems in the world are NP. Things like Scheduling, Register Allocation, Routing packages, etc. In solving these really hard problems, we invent heuristics. Typically such heuristics are specific to the problem domain. For example, UPS might exploit certain characteristic about the geographical layout of the country; they face a certain subset [...]]]> http://www.cogitolingua.net/blog/2012/02/01/transforming-heuristics/ Public School, it is a Prison How the Public Schools Keep Your Child a Prisoner of the State by Karen De Coster, has a few interesting links about how public schools act like prisons for both mind and body.

A really well researched article on equality via the school system: “Compulsory schooling not only fails to achieve its egalitarian goal, but [...]]]> http://www.cogitolingua.net/blog/2012/02/01/public-school-it-is-a-prison/ Don’t Fear the Mistakes During teaching, there is a fascinating (and unfortunately common) problem: Students are VERY reluctant to suggest an answer, for fear that they might be wrong.

Salman Kahn, noticed this phenomenon after he started doing videos for his niece and nephew: (I’m paraphrasing) “The last thing they needed was for me to be there expecting an [...]]]> http://www.cogitolingua.net/blog/2012/01/31/dont-fear-the-mistakes/ A New Field: Information Type Flow In my last post on Information Flow, I noticed that some flows are more informative than others. I used a switch statement for my illustrative example of that observation. But, from my experience as a software developer, I have a small aversion to switch statements. Usually, when I feel compelled to use one, it’s because [...]]]> http://www.cogitolingua.net/blog/2012/01/30/a-new-field-information-type-flow/ Gold is Money I would like to evaluate whether or not Gold functions better than paper as a currency. This subject comes up, because of an engaging argument that I had last night about the U.S. Constitution and it’s purview of the monetary policy of the U.S. government. In particular, though the Constitution does not define what Money [...]]]> http://www.cogitolingua.net/blog/2012/01/29/gold-is-money/ The Good IR After parsing, each function can be represented as a ControlFlowGraph of BasicBlocks. Each BasicBlock holds a list of Instructions. For illustrative purposes Instructions are colored Blue and BasicBlocks are colored Orange.

I’d now like to address the question: What should the ConditionalBranch instruction at the end of the If-Header point to?

Option Illustration Pro Con [...]]]> http://www.cogitolingua.net/blog/2012/01/27/the-good-ir/ Deliberate Practice: Learn to Type If you’re gonna be in the software industry. You have to communicate, not only through code but also through email, forums, IRC or IM. It’s not so important that you be a fast typing in order to bang out code really fast. Rather, you should be a fast typing so that it doesn’t hold you [...]]]> http://www.cogitolingua.net/blog/2012/01/24/deliberate-practice-learn-to-type/ Project Course in Web Services I’ve just finished reading Phillip Greenspun’s experience report, Teaching Software Engineering, which details a project course in building Web Services. Even though I personally, hate the Web’s architecture (but that’s a rant for some other time), it still remains as THE most influentential and convenient place to showcase one’s work. It’s also convenient for shopping, [...]]]> http://www.cogitolingua.net/blog/2012/01/23/project-course-in-web-services/ Not All Flows are Considered Equal When I was writing last post about information flow terminology, I noticed something interesting: when knowledge of control flows are used to determine the values of variables, some branches yield more information than others. Previously, I had only considered the binary if-then-else branch. Today, I shall examine a switch-case statement, which exhibits asymmetric information flow.

[...]]]> http://www.cogitolingua.net/blog/2012/01/23/not-all-flows-are-considered-equal/