Where is the 3Q2012 Book Selection?

[[deleted user]]

I decided to try something a little different for the July 1, 2012 - September 30, 2012 period. Instead of picking another book, we will set aside this time to learn a new language, or improve skills in an existing language. To help do this, if you are interested, sign up for Project Euler at http://projecteuler.net .

This site contains a series of programming challenges. The idea is that you pick a language, pick a problem, and when you solve the problem in the language, you get a point, and more importantly get access to a discussion thread that shows how others solved the problem, in your same language and in many others. This is often a humbling revelation! Informally, you are also encouraged to get the run time of your solution down to under a minute, which often means that you must be a bit clever in algorithm choice in order to deal with the scale issues for the given problem. The problems are ordered in roughly increasing level of difficulty.

So, if you are game, use this thread to commit to make some progress over the next three months, and share the language you will use.

[[deleted user]]

I am using Haskell for the Project Euler challenge.

[Aleksander]

This project works great for me – although I don’t have strong background in designing algorithms, I really like solving problems. So, basically this project allows me to learn and enjoy doing something at the same time. I started a little earlier, 2 weeks ago, and now I’m on Problem 28. I have to admit that solving these problems is very addictive, and I’m trying to limit myself to 1-2 problems per day, though I expect them to become more challenging in nearest future.

I’m using C++ for now, but I’m planning to switch to a different language like ARM assembly or some functional soon.

[Aleksander]

I’m just curious about how everyone did while working on problems for the Project Euler challenge?

I was actively working on this until mid-August. Most challenging problem for me was Problem 54 – How many hands did player one win in the game of poker?. It took probably 5-6 hours to finish that one.

Most interesting problem was problem 59 - Using a brute force attack, can you decrypt the cipher using XOR encryption?.

I will definitely keep doing this when time allows.
Just wondering if anyone has an experience with APL/J/K? I noticed in the forum, that most of the problems can be solved in single line, though syntax looks very weird to me…

[[deleted user]]

Wow, you made lots of progress!

I hit up through 21 in Haskell.

When I first started working for IBM, 1/2 my department programmed in APL. It required a special keyboard. It has my vote for the most unreadable programming language, but it is also one of the most powerful.

The Wikipedia article on it is pretty good: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APL_(pro...

-- Brad