Saleh Blog

“Programming the LOL way. All LOLCats, LOL, ALL CAPS”

I found this from Marco Casario blog and I would like to share it.
LOLCODE.. ever heared of it? Its a new programming laguage which codes are written in a funny way. I think its a nice idea to start such a language. The language is still at the early stages, maybe you should visite the website to support them or/and contribute if you want :).

I have been working on some projects lately for my classes and others for money. One of the project I was doing is a web based program for senior students project on Petruleom Engineering department. The goal of the program is to find how long the oil will last in Kuwait. In addition, the program should find the maximum production and the year of maximum production.

So far it seems easy, but the hard part is coming.. drawing the chart!. Okay, that sounds easy for me at the begining, but after thinking for awhile I realize that will consume time. I start by looking for an open source of a chart program. Searching for over 12hours for charting program on JAVA or ActionScript. All I can find are the ones you have to pay ALOT of money just to make one. Therefore, I decided to make the charting program from scratch.

Adobe Flash’s Actionscript 2 was the language I decided to use for the program. The reason is because I’m going to make the program a web based program which loads on a webpage and works there. Java was my second option because first I’m more experienced on ActionScript than Java, and second because I didn’t have much time to waste on a language I’m less experienced in since final exam was close.

The first kind of graph/chart needed is “scattered xy” with a linear regression line. Arrghh, looking for linear regression equation really exhausted me because I was using the wrong term when searching for it for many hours. I’ll take about it in details in coming posts.

The second kind of the chart is scattered xy with nonlinear regression curve. But I won’t figure out this curve’s equation, I’ll just use the given data to draw the curve. Its almost the same as the first graph idea in coding, just needed to include few more stuffs.

I highly recommend computer geeks and new developers to watch this.

Memory is cheap, it is not a priority for developers anymore. However, developers trys their best to avoid as much as possible to reserve extra memory for their programs, sometimes it can’t be helped when performance is needed more. When more performance needed, more memory is needed. Speed and memory are vise versa. To increase speed of a program you need extra memory from the RAM. For example, using double linked list is much faster than single linked list, but double linked list reserves extra memory for the extra link each node will have. You don’t have to go through the whole list again to search for a prevoiuse node if its a single linked list. You just use the previouse link and increase the speed of the program.

Look at the following C++ code:

typename <Item class>class node
{
   private:
   int nodeNumber;
   <Item> data;
   node *next;
};

For double linked list node you have to add an extra pointer for previouse node:

typename <Item class> class node
{
   private:
   int nodeNumber;
   <Item> data;
   node *next;
   node *previous;
};

A new era of web and graphic design is about to unfold. The new version of Adobe Creative Suit 3 will be commercially available soon. Flash CS3 is about to come out with its many new features which makes me even more happy.. importing photoshop and ai files, convert the motion to an actionscript code, and ActionScript 3 ofcourse.

Many new programs are coming up this year. Too hard to keep up with all those new releases, my goal is to learn javascript deeper, actionscript 3, studying college materials, practicing Max 3D, adding more materials for my website, and again study my college lessons. I still need to learn the new version of Adobe Flash, Adobe Photoshop, and Adobe Flex Builder. I am also aiming to learn Adobe Apollo, the new program to combine all my web development skills. Adobe Apollo is still under developed and the alpha version is out.

Now its time to buy new books which will cost me a fortune 🙁 .

Congratulation to Poles, University of Warsaw who won the Association for Computer Machinery’s International Collegiate Programming Contest (ACM ICPC) world finals this year on Tokyo. Warsaw solved 8 and won the ACM ICPC champoinship again. China got the second place (solved 7 problems) and Russia got third place after solving 6 problems. Congratulation to all those teams. Good luck for all the rest for next year.

There were 6,099 teams from around the globe, only 88 teams were qualified for finals. The main sponsore of the ACM ICPC is IBM for many years now.

I had participated on ACM ICPC Arab region, but unfortunately we lost to the 13th place. I’ll work hard this year to get a good rank in next year… I hope so!