language-agnostic Questions

11

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My friend ran into a question in an interview and he was told that there is an O(n) solution. However, neither of us can think it up. Here is the question: There is a string which contains just ( ...

9

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Is there any fast way to find the largest power of 10 smaller than a given number? I'm using this algorithm, at the moment, but something inside myself dies anytime I see it: 10**( int( math.log1...
Wistful asked 22/12, 2010 at 21:4

3

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Disclaimer: Feel free to close this as "too localized", if you think it is inappropriate for StackOverflow. Since there's quite a large German-speaking community here, I thought I'd give it a try. ...
Stunt asked 31/8, 2011 at 9:33

5

I often see the terms "binary" and "executable" seemingly used interchangeably. Isn't it two terms to describe the same thing; the executable output program after a compilation ...
Tousle asked 20/1, 2020 at 15:22

13

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I've got lots of source code files written in various languages, but none of them have a standard comment at the top (sometimes even across the same project). Some of them don't have any header com...
Phillisphilly asked 10/1, 2010 at 5:15

6

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We all know that the logical && operator short circuits if the left operand is false, because we know that if one operand is false, then the result is also false. Why doesn't the bitwise &...
Mortification asked 13/3, 2012 at 16:46

10

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We use a data acquisition card to take readings from a device that increases its signal to a peak and then falls back to near the original value. To find the peak value we currently search the arra...
Subdominant asked 6/8, 2008 at 10:23

12

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Given a 2D circle with 2 angles in the range -PI -> PI around a coordinate, what is the value of the smallest angle between them? Taking into account that the difference between PI and -PI is no...
Miserly asked 10/12, 2009 at 6:1

12

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A hypothetical situation: you've implemented a password handling system, and it doesn't impose any limitations at all on what characters can be used. You want to set up some rules that are a reason...
Venetian asked 6/10, 2009 at 8:40

4

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As the title states when would you recommend the use of the mediator design pattern and where do you see it used incorrectly?
Aymer asked 17/12, 2008 at 3:46

41

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I am analyzing the following data: Raw data (seperated with spaces): 1 1 1.1 1 0.9 1 1 1.1 1 0.9 1 1.1 1 1 0.9 1 1 1.1 1 1 1 1 1.1 0.9 1 1.1 1 1 0.9 1 1.1 1 1 1.1 1 0.8 0.9 1 1.2 0.9 1 1 1.1 1.2 1...

6

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I need to choose a compression algorithm to compress some data. I don't know the type of data I'll be compressing in advance (think of it as kinda like the WinRAR program). I've heard of the follo...
Toler asked 7/3, 2010 at 18:52

10

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So, here's a funny little programming challenge. I was writing a quick method to determine all the market holidays for a particular year, and then I started reading about Easter and discovered just...
Cassatt asked 3/2, 2010 at 14:19

40

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Inversion of Control (IoC) can be quite confusing when it is first encountered. What is it? Which problem does it solve? When is it appropriate to use and when not?

6

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It's a pretty normal binary tree, except for the fact that one of the nodes may be empty. I'd like to find a way to output it in a horizontal way (that is, the root node is on the left and expands...
Antineutrino asked 16/6, 2010 at 20:35

23

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I'd like to generate unique random numbers between 0 and 1000 that never repeat (i.e. 6 doesn't show up twice), but that doesn't resort to something like an O(N) search of previous values to do it....
Geny asked 12/10, 2008 at 20:34

10

I have written a system that summarizes a long document containing thousands of words. Are there any norms on how such a system should be evaluated in the context of a user survey? In short,...
Lacto asked 26/3, 2012 at 20:26

23

What is a callback function?
Wrote asked 5/5, 2009 at 10:18

5

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To calculate min edit distance (the minimum amount of insertions, deletions and substitutions required to transform one word to another), a dynamic programming solution is based on the recurrence r...
Earsplitting asked 7/3, 2016 at 3:55

2

What is the standard, cross-platform way to detect stale pid file in a Unix environment? Say I would like to kill an old instance of my application, but I certainly don't want to disrupt an unrelat...
Nelsen asked 23/10, 2016 at 17:16

3

Is it possible to configure git diff to respect indentation and syntax? I am not talking about ignoring indentation and spaces, but rather to use blank lines, indentation levels and possibly bracke...
Howlyn asked 11/6, 2014 at 12:15

36

Why prefer composition instead of inheritance? What trade-offs are there for each approach? And the converse question: when should I choose inheritance instead of composition?

8

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Are shift operations O(1) or O(n) ? Does it make sense that computers generally require more operations to shift 31 places instead of shifting 1 place? Or does it make sense the number of operati...
Anacreontic asked 31/1, 2012 at 17:5

7

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What's the difference between application layer and business logic layer? I kind of understand that business layer provides business specific services and application layer couples business service...
Franchescafranchise asked 13/4, 2010 at 15:17

3

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Google's Encoded Polyline Algorithm Format: How do you decode this? Perhaps run the algorithm backwards; But I'm stuck at step 5: without the initial value, how do I know if it's positive/ne...
Hotze asked 18/2, 2012 at 12:9

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