Redcode

Orchard Planting: Greatest Common Divisor

royvanrijn — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 12:21:59 +0000

The Orchard Planting contest from infinite search space is over. So it is time for a quick write-up.

The rules are simple, on a grid of integers, place N points on the grid to get as much 4 points on a line and never more then 4 points on a line.

My big break-through [...]

Parleys: Devoxx talk published

royvanrijn — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 19:50:50 +0000

The guys at Devoxx/Parleys have already processed all the talks and post-processed them. So my talk it now available at Parleys.com.
There is one drawback though, the talk is currently for subscribers only. If you don’t have one you can only watch the first two (very nervous) minutes.

If you’ve attended Devoxx you will [...]

Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Stephen Colbert

royvanrijn — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 12:02:03 +0000

Most internet videos are a waste of time, but this one isn’t! This is an interview of Stephen Colbert (out of his normal character) with Neil DeGrasse Tyson (Hayden Planetarium director, TV science host).

The project manager and his pregnant wife

royvanrijn — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 23:21:15 +0000

Adding resources

Today I’ve (again) seen this quote on Twitter:

“A project manager is someone who thinks that 9 pregnant women can create a baby in 1 month”

This obviously isn’t the case. The story demonstrates that adding more people to a team won’t (necessarily) make the team more effective. Because some processes can’t be [...]

Bytebeat: Algorithmic Symphonies

royvanrijn — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 15:42:08 +0000

A couple of days ago I first encountered “bytebeat”. This is a new hype revolving algorithmic music and sounds. The basic idea is this:

main(t) { for(t=0;;t++) putchar( t * (((t>>12) | (t>>8) ) & ( 63 & (t>>4)))); }

This simple loop has one variable, t (time). And every iteration we use t to [...]

Math doodling: Vi Hart

royvanrijn — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 18:06:40 +0000

As you might know I’m a big fan of math contests and basically just math in general. But only as long as it doesn’t involve long/hard equations! Math is all around us, we just don’t see it because we’ve been taught that math equals equations.

There is one person that keeps amazing me with her [...]

Simple Made Easy

royvanrijn — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 21:22:55 +0000

When browsing this blog I came across a very good talk about programming and simplicity. What is simplicity? Things that are easy right? Wrong.

I won’t go into the subject, just watch this talk!!
http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy

Devoxx 2011: Speaking at Devoxx

royvanrijn — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 15:01:11 +0000

I’m back home from Devoxx, I’m still alive (kind of) and it was great!

First of all, I had never been to Devoxx before, so it was all a new experience for me. And second, I was speaking at this conference, which is my first international talk! In this blogpost I’ll try to describe how [...]

Code quality: Confirmation

royvanrijn — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 14:32:29 +0000

Last week I wrote a blogpost on rewriting code and improving quality. And now we have some great news that will support my claims. To verify our project and convince management we are doing it the right way, we’ve send a copy of our code to TÜViT.

TÜViT

Most people from Europe will [...]

Great code is written twice (or more)

royvanrijn — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 19:46:13 +0000

The last couple of years more and more people have been moving towards Agile development. These techniques aren’t new, most we’re devised in the 80s or 90s. But finally these days programmers and (more importantly) business consultants, architects and clients have learned to love and embrace Agile development.

Evolving requirements

It [...]