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Choosing a Computer Language for a Project
2+ day ago —...But compared to mainstream choices like Python, C, C++ and Java (... ...(or you could do what Facebook/Meta did and just write a new compiler... ...performance rather than going through costly abstractions or an interpreter layer... ...It is said that programmer productivity is limited by the ability...
johndcook.com > blog
Finding strings in binary files | strings(1)
5+ day ago —...a sequence of four or more bytes that correspond to printable ASCII... ...There are 98 printable ASCII characters and 256 possible values for... ...Cook, PhD My colleagues and I have decades of consulting experience...
johndcook.com > blog
Extract text from a PDF
6+ day, 6+ min ago —...Arshad Khan left a comment on my post on the less and more utilities... ...intended, maybe even in a way the author tried to discourage.... ...Related post: Your PDF may reveal more than you intend John D....
johndcook.com > blog
Length of a general Archimedean spiral
6+ day ago —...In this post we want to look at the general case where n might not... ...Cook, PhD My colleagues and I have decades of consulting experience...
johndcook.com > blog
Length of an Archimedes spiral
1+ week ago —...I may look at more general values of n in a future post.... ...According to Mathworld, the exact length of the spiral is πbm √(1... ...Cook, PhD My colleagues and I have decades of consulting experience...
johndcook.com > blog
More is less
1+ week ago —...Daniel Halbert wrote more in 1978.... ...Mark Nudelman a similar program with more functionality in 1984 which... ...Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886–1969) who often quoted it.... ...He was born Ludwig Mies and later appended van der Rohe....
johndcook.com > blog
Precise answers to useless questions
1+ week ago —...I recently ran across a tweet from Allen Downey saying So much of... ...I taught mathematical statistics at GSBS [1, 2] several times, and... ...part of, or at least co-branded with, MD Anderson Cancer Center.... ...and Allen Downey: one of my students was his former student, and...
johndcook.com > blog
Odds of pairs in poker with five, six, or seven cards
2+ week ago —...Cheung [1] gives reasons why poker is usually played with five cards... ...The author gives several reasons, but here I’ll just look at one... ...Cook, PhD My colleagues and I have decades of consulting experience... ...Mathematical Gazette, Dec., 1989, Vol. 466 (Dec., 1989), pp. 313–315 John...
johndcook.com > blog
Earth is to Jupiter and Jupiter is to the Sun
2+ week ago —..., and Earth.... ...of Sun and Earth.... ...Notice that the vertical bar in the symbol for Earth is vertical,... ...Cook, PhD My colleagues and I have decades of consulting experience...
johndcook.com > blog
Gravity on Jupiter
2+ week ago —...Jupiter has more than 300 times more mass than the earth.... ...Why is its surface gravity only 2.6 times that of the earth?... ...The mass of Jupiter is 318 times that of Earth, and the its mean... ...So if Jupiter were made of the same stuff as Earth, its surface gravity...