I'm mad leetcode doesn't let you test your answers without an account. Rawr

Also, I really struggle with the idea that being a good programmer means you instantly know the best way to write a solution the second you finish hearing the problem. I'm pretty sure that's not how it works in real life, but that's the understanding I've developed from solving lots of little simple things through school.

Yet another reason I assume school is somewhat bad for/at teaching software engineering.

To be clear, I'm not asking about practical coding standards here. I was just curious if there was any way at all to get a faster execution time in Python. My solution is already pretty weird imo, using a bitwise operator and casting the result to bool. Here's what I'd normally do (somebody might want to work on this problem so I'll spoiler it, even though for such a simple example it seems silly).



But then I decided to make a game of trying to optimize the runtime and my earlier post was the best I could come up with, but apparently not very good at all (my best was 44ms, somebody got it down to 32ms in Python so I'm curious).

Try using the bit shift operator maybe.

Since I'm not a technical interviewer, I wouldn't know the answer. the claim was to see if you know how to design a program, with very low priority on knowing how to use arcane algorithms.

my approach was this, which I'm sure is awful:



I don't think so. I suspect it would work with any two sets of numbers, but e and pi just sounds cool.

in b4 gaming mouse posts a 1 line solution to daveT's problem

fruit snacks; I'm sure there's some recurrance / pizza-slicing algorithm that does this just as well. I've never been that good at discrete math or recurrances, so I suppose that would be a limitation of my algorithmic understanding on these types of questions. That would definitely remove the muti-demsional array and reduce the time and space complexity, but wouldn't make it a one-line solution.

i think i could probably get the brute force recursive solution down to a readable 10-15 lines, but i'll be honest: i see no way to write a solution that handles 100 digit numbers. that's far beyond the scope of a brute force solution, yet if we have to print all possible solutions, i don't see any trick to avoid brute forcing. dave, are you sure the problem required handling 100 digits?

I'm not entirely sure what the top number was. This is from some older notes and I don't have the entire spec written down. I searched online and there are a few that have the entire problem with solutions, but no one mentioned the top limit. For some reason, 100 digits sticks in my head.

For whatever it's worth, my solution was about 20 LOC, but as noted, I used modules. I guess that solving it for some reasonable solution that doesn't require brute-forcing would count as well. I'd rather adjust the number down if that means the solution is elegant.

For example, this is a solution: https://gist.github.com/bhu1st/7dea8ec07b10bc28310b

but it uses eval(), which I explicitly remember was disallowed in the question posed to me.

I think the correct one-line solution is this, though:

Def index
@images = @Image.all.sample(1)
end

Can someone please tell me why this line works for def index but not for def home? I'm trying to get random @images for the homepage (pulled from Images model) and no combination works.

Have any of you guys used this keyboard before?
http://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-K.../dp/B005EOWBHC

I know a mechnical keyboard would be nice but I'm wondering now that maybe something like the above keyboard would be good, simply because it would be much easier to clean and should be tactile enough?

Have you ever used mechanical before? Like, the new modern ones

After going through a lot of them, I can't say enough good things about this keyboard: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005L38VRU

Solar powered, wireless. There's no lag when it comes on and the keys are low and flat. Gunk doesn't get under them, they don't break and to me their easier to type on. It's similar to the MacBook keyboard feel.

why are you "going through a lot of them"?

That's basically a standard office Dell keyboard.

If you can't take the keys off the keyboard, they are not easy to clean.

The "tactile" in mechs refer to a point about mid-travel, where a "bump" indicates that you have activated the switch. If used well, you seldom "bottom out" which means you are never actually hitting the hard surface under the keys.

In contrast, the linked keyboard requires full travel, thus you are hitting the hard surface beneath the keys each time, which while "tactile," is highly unpleasant, and not synonymous with the meaning used in mechs.

IMO, the low-profile flat-keyed board you have linked is the worst kind of keyboard. it only takes me a few hours of use before my hands start burning. I'd rather take the style with taller keys, but they aren't a huge step better.

@Noodle, nope but the Das mechanical keyboards are supposedly some of the best. Haven't gotten a chance to try one first hand. Youtube them tho if you want to see reviews.

@daveT, the problem with normal sized keys for cleaning is random crap gets under them and some keyboards are really difficult to take apart so cleaning it involves fishing between the keys with a pin or toothpick.

I'm not a slob either, but after a few years stuff does accumulate. I figured the short keys would lock out the dirt.

Hmm, that's interesting. I have a "regular" keyboard now (big keys, not a true mech) and I guess it falls somewhere in the middle. I personally hit them all the way down but if I sit here and try to measure it, it does feel like it will register a key before it bottoms out.

What makes your hands burn? I never tried the short keys before.

I have a Das Keyboard, and it is still running great after 3 years. I'm not a slob either, but yeah, that stuff gets dirty. I probably break apart my keyboard about once every 3 months and give it a good solid clean. The keys are easy to remove with a key yanker. Of course, if you have the blank keys like I do, you have to be careful to put them back in correctly.

I'm not entirely sure what makes my hands burn with the low-profile keys. My laptop has scissor switches and that doesn't bother me much, though I have my keyboard on my laptop now. I think it is because the Dell-like boards have no real resistance until I bottom out the keys, so I hit the key with full force, plus after a few months, a key or two no longer responds on the first strike, so I end up double hitting very hard. The scissor keys and the mech each have a little bit of push back.

Mechanical keyboards are like high end office chairs. There is no point trying to convince someone how a $1200 chair is better than a $120 chair. Either they'll get it, or their use cases are so bizarre they don't. Plenty of people love the Apple keyboard. w/e

I use a Filco. Most people will get a ~10-20wpm boost in speed (obv not if you're 130wpm+) moving over to a mechanical.

daveT,

Nice selection.

Keys break or I don't like them due to ergonomic issues or bluetooth lag.

For the record I type at about 70 wpm. Having to double strike due to a hardware issue sounds annoying. That's kind of what my keyboard is like now because it's 5 years old and has never been taken apart to clean.

I'm pretty sure you could build a bird's nest with the amount of garbage floating under the casing.

I love it when I forget what language I'm in:

Also I was proofreading a JAVA exam the other day and it had a fun sub question about infinite loops. It's pretty obvious when it's introduced like this so I'll just write it. Was a multiple choice question "which of the following causes an infinite loop" with one answer being
I think it's kind of a dumb question but also kind of fun. Obviously powered through the test and didn't even read the byte and only thought...lawl always <0 so infinite...this is too easy.

Does anyone have any insight into just how "minimum" an MVP should be?

For example: My friend and I want to track some information about User activity, which would require a certain database structure. This user activity is NOT a feature for an MVP, but it would likely be added later. In an MVP scenario do you literally just code the features with no regard for future development and just spend the extra time later to rewrite stuff?

It is really hard to answer that question, but my experience with MVPs leads me to be skeptical that tracking user activity will "require a certain database structure" and would completely ignore that and if you want it in the future, figure it out then.

Like, not to say it doesn't require a certain database structure, just that right now you aren't going to do it right anyway so what is the point in doing something that probably won't work in the future.

Here is what an engineer working on an MVP release said earlier today