It All Starts With the Liver… — It All Starts With the Liver… Let’s take a break from programming for a while and talk about biology. More specifically, cells. I promise this will tie into message passing, just stick with me. This is a repost from programmingwords.com. It’s a blog about about different computer science topics explained in a simple, understandable way. Check…

When a compiler encounters an expression, usually it tries to evaluate it. Evaluation is the process of getting the root meaning of a piece… — When a compiler encounters an expression, usually it tries to evaluate it. Evaluation is the process of getting the root meaning of a piece of code. The meaning of 5 + 3 is 8. Our brains also do this: when somebody tells you, "She's a good programmer!", your brain is…

You probably know how OOP works. The class Dog inherits from class Animal, which means that if you have a Dog you access methods from… — You probably know how OOP works. The class Dog inherits from class Animal, which means that if you have a Dog you access methods from Animal. This is actually just a subset of OOP. You can be object oriented without classes, and that's what JavaScript does. A class is a…

Recursion is, simply put, a function calling itself. — Recursion is, simply put, a function calling itself. def someFunction(x): someFunction(x - 1) If you try to run the above code, you’ll notice it will run in an infinite loop until something on your machine crashes terribly. This is why every recursive function has two parts: a base case and…

You’ve heard of object oriented, imperative and functional programming. These are all different programming paradigms, or ways of thinking… — You’ve heard of object oriented, imperative and functional programming. These are all different programming paradigms, or ways of thinking about programs. The reason you’ve heard of these is because they’re really popular paradigms. But they’re not the only ones out there! There are probably more than 20 different programming paradigms…

What’s the smallest number greater than 0? This is one of those simple questions with complicated answers somewhere between “there is none”… — What’s the smallest number greater than 0? This is one of those simple questions with complicated answers somewhere between “there is none” and “it depends”. If you ask a mathematician, they will tell you that there can’t be such a number because it would break math. If you have a…

Sometimes it feels like programming languages didn’t really change from the 60s up to now. When I feel that, I often remind myself of the… — Sometimes it feels like programming languages didn’t really change from the 60s up to now. When I feel that, I often remind myself of the cool tools and features we have now that make our lives easier. We now have things like an integrated debugger, unit tests, static analysis, cool…

I usually don’t wear a watch, but recently I found a watch I got as a gift at the bottom of my closet. I dusted it off, went to a watch… — I usually don’t wear a watch, but recently I found a watch I got as a gift at the bottom of my closet. I dusted it off, went to a watch repair shop to change the battery, and it’s ticking again. Wearing it for a few days, I noticed a…