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I want to solve geometry problems in online programming contests. But whenever I read them, I just find too difficult. Please suggest some books and resources which I can study computational geometry.
A classic work: Computational Geometry in C.
And there's also: http://www.cs.uu.nl/geobook/.
In order to solve basic geometry problems quickly, so that it runs within the time limits of the contest, you need to make certain you have a strong grasp of writing algorithms.
This page has some good suggestions on how to get better. It is set up as a two semester course of reading.
http://mrmbdctg.freehostia.com/contest_Tipsforbeginner.html
You can try the problem archive on TopCoder.
But you should register first.
On the filter choose:
Category: Geometry
Division II Level: Level One or Level Two.
Almost all problems have description of solutions.
They are pretty simple in comparison you choose random geometric problem from some contest archive.
On the page you can also find a lot of tutorials, including geometric ones.
I recommend two books (among others):
The Algorithm Design Manual By Steven S. Skiena - discusses algorithms in general, but has a lot of useful information about computational geometry
Computational Geometry: Algorithms and Applications
If you want to clear your basics, this is a good starting point - https://www.hackerearth.com/notes/computational-geometry-i-1/. There are some practice problems as well in the article.
You should also read through this article - http://www.toptal.com/python/computational-geometry-in-python-from-theory-to-implementation that covers some advanced concepts.
You must know convex hull and point-in-polygon. Often on TopCoder people create a reusable library for geometry applications, since the same is code is used many times.
Check lbackstrom's tutorial for start. Computional Geometry by de Berg, Cheong, van Kreveld, Overmars [edit: already mentioned by Bart] might be more than you need.
And of course there's Computational Geometry - An Introduction, by Preparata and Shamos. I own it, and recommend it for an introduction to the principles. Not really a dictionary of code, though.
Here are two excellent books, I used them as textbooks at university:
J D Foley, A van Dam et al. Introduction to Computer Graphics. Addison-Wesley, 1994, ISBN 0-201-60921-5.
D Hearn and M P Baker. Computer Graphics with Open GL (3rd edition). Prentice-Hall, 2004, ISBN 0-13-120238-3.
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Can anyone gives some suggestions for good natural language processing book. Following are the factors I have in mind:
It gives a good overview of these huge topics without too much depth.
Concepts need to explain in picture form.
Sample code in JAVA/Python/R.
You can look at online courses about NLP. They oftain contain videos, exercices, writing documents, suggested readings...
I especially like this one : https://www.coursera.org/course/nlp (see suggested readings section for instance). You can access the lectures here : https://class.coursera.org/nlp/lecture (pdf + video + subtitles).
I believe there are three options for you--I wrote one of them so take this with a grain of salt.
1) Natural Language Processing with Python
by Steven Bird et al. http://amzn.com/0596516495. This book covers using the NLP api NLTK and is considered a solid book for intro to NLP. Lots of code, a more academic take on what NLP is and I assume broadly used in undergraduate NLP classes.
2) Natural Language Processing with Java by Richard Reese http://amzn.to/1D0liUY. This covers a range of APIs, including LingPipe below, and introduces NLP concepts and how they are implemented in a range of open source APIs. It is a more shallow dive into NLP but it is a gentler introduction and it covers how a bunch of APIs solve the same problem so it may help you pick what API to use.
3) Natural Language Processing with Java and LingPipe Cookbook by Breck Baldwin (me) and Krishna Dayanidhi http://amzn.to/1MvgHxa. This is meant for industrial programmers and it covers the concepts common in commercial NLP applications. The book is a much deeper dive into evaluation, problem specification, varied technologies that on the face do the same thing. But it expects you to learn from examples (overwhelmingly Twitter data).
All the books have lots of code, one in Python, the other two in Java. Both present mature APIs with a large installed base.
None of the books do much in the way of graphical explanation of what the software is doing.
Good luck
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I remember reading an article saying something like
"The number of bugs introduced doesn't vary much with different programming languages, but it depends pretty much on SLOC (source lines of code). So, using the programming language that can implement the same functions with smaller SLOC is preferable in terms of stability."
The author wanted to stress the advantages of using Functional Programming, as normally one can program with a smaller number of LOC. I remember the author cited a research paper about the irrelevance of choice of programming language and the number of bugs.
Is there anyone who knows the research paper or the article?
Paul Graham wrote something very like this in his essay Succinctness is Power. He quotes a report from Ericsson, which may be the paper you remember?
Reports from the field, though they will necessarily be less precise than "scientific" studies, are likely to be more meaningful. For example, Ulf Wiger of Ericsson did a study that concluded that Erlang was 4-10x more succinct than C++, and proportionately faster to develop software in:
Comparisons between Ericsson-internal development projects indicate similar line/hour productivity, including all phases of software development, rather independently of which language (Erlang, PLEX, C, C++, or Java) was used. What differentiates the different languages then becomes source code volume.
I'm not sure if it's the source you're thinking of, but there's something about this in Code Complete chapter 27.3 (p652) - that references "Program Quality and Programmer Productivity" (Jones 1977) and "Estimating Software Costs" (Jones 1998).
I've seen this argument about "succinctness = power" a few times, and I've never really bought it. That's because there are languages (e.g., J, Ursala) which are quite succinct but not (IMO) easy to read because they put so much meaning into individual symbols.
Perhaps the true metric should be the extent to which it is possible to write a particular algorithm both clearly and succinctly. Mind you, I don't know how to measure that.
The book of pragmatic Thinking & Learning points to this article.
Can a Manufacturing Quality Model Work for Software?
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I'm currently looking for diagramming software that allows me to quickly map stuff and jot down concepts such as a filesystem directories represented by nested boxes containing icons (representing files.)
Off course the simplest solution of all would be to just use paper and pencil, but unfortunately i have such poor motor skills that after minutes i cannot even distinguish the shapes I've drawn myself, never mind have these notes be of any use to someone else in order to have him/her work with them.
So far I've tried a ton of software packages but none of it seem to be simple/flexible/powerful enough to help fulfill the modeling /sketching tasks I'm trying to achieve
Visio,
smartdraw
Edraw
conceptdraw
Vue
yEd
Dia
Kivio
paint.net
photoshop
Illustrator
GIMP
in addition I've played around with modeling tools including staruml,argouml and Visual Paradigm as well as Eclipse modeling, but most of them were too complicated, too constricting and in some ways completely alien. On a side note, I absolutely HATE eclipse, I'm used to writing shellscripts with nano on a shell, The sheer amount of features (That i will never ever have any use for) make it hard for me to find that which I'm really looking for. YAGNI GDDMM*T!
Allthough UML modeling is at times important, such models are more for the next follow up phase and would be overkill (as well as a creativity killing burden) when I'm trying to come up with something from scratch.
Right now I'm looking for something new, I would be more than happy if someone could perhaps suggest something,
Most importantly i would like to find a program where the software allows me to do add new shapes and with the parent shape automatically growing so that that added shapes all fit inside of it rather than that i have to manually resize the parent shape
Your problem is a common one, and in recent years the big UML tool vendors have started adding functionality for sketching, as opposed to traditional modelling. My favourite, Enterprise Architect from Sparx Systems, has got "whiteboard" sketching and is also able to import from Visio.
It boils down to whether you know you'll just want to sketch, in which case you should get a tool which does that really really well (that last feature you mentioned is something I haven't seen in any UML tool). If on the other hand you know that you'll eventually want to turn the sketches into UML models, you need to consider whether you'll want to start over (which might be the easiest option, honestly) or have some sort of in-tool support to do that.
For "UML as a Sketch" I use the Hruby UML Stencil for Visio. These do not enforce eny semantics, so you can be as sketchy as you need to quickly record ideas and communicate.
See http://www.softwarestencils.com/uml/index.html
I use Dia. It is cross platform. Very simple tool.
However, My favorite has always been to sketch it on paper and scan (fotopragh it on my mobile) and keep it for records. Nothing beats pen and paper yet !
I tried yEd recently, because I happened to see it mentioned in another thread here. I'm quite impressed with it. Its pretty easy to use. I think the feature I liked the most is that I can draw my diagram regardless of the spacing and orientation. Then 1 button and poof, the whole things rearranges into the ordering I want.
As a linux diagramming tool, im pretty impressed with it.
this one is good for remote team members.
Nothing to install
http://www.dabbleboard.com/
I've used Visio for so long IMHO nothing beats it.
That said, I rarely use Visio in meetings to take initial notes. We'll diagram on whiteboards (get someone else to do the diagramming while you "facilitate") and then I take pictures of the result. Transcribing the photos to a Visio diagram helps me think it through.
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I feel that my professional exposure has been biased towards Visio, by the choice of IT managers and project managers. I've worked only in Microsoft solution centric shops where MS Office was the standard.
Are there any other professional shops out there using other tools?
A whiteboard is pretty good. Bad upgrade path though.
Well the current star product for user interface prototyping is Balsamiq Mockups:
http://balsamiq.com/products/mockups
Another new and good choice is FlairBuilder:
http://www.flairbuilder.com/
Another similar tool is ForeUI:
http://www.foreui.com/
Yes, Enterprise Architect by Sparx Systems is very popular. I have used it at several places I have worked.
I either use my whiteboard, or a nifty little Free Software tool called UMLPad.
It would be really nifty if there was a nice standard vector drawing file format so that these tools could interoperate. SVG is close, but IE doesn't support it. In the meantime UMLPad does what I need.
UModel is a very good diagramming tool which I prefer greatly over Visio.
Rational Rose is another major player in the diagramming and modeling world.
Both of these products above generally will be more expensive than Visio, making them not as widely used in all software development circles. There are also lots of smaller and pretty popular free alternatives out there like UMLPad.
Visio is only the most widely used because it is the one people tend to gravitate towards through their Microsoft Office familiarity, not generally because it's the best product out there (far from it in my opinion). I wouldn't call it a standard other than maybe a de facto standard due to its high numbers.
I've used Smartdraw during my college time and I really like it,but at the company I work we use all Microsoft stuff.
Assuming you're talking about UML diagrams, I've not worked professionally with any, but I find different free diagramming are good for different diagrams.
I prefer
ArgoUML for class diagrams, sequence diagrams
UMLet for deployment and component diagrams
Dia for activity diagrams
That covers the diagrams I spend most of my time drawing.
I find UMLet and Dia are easy to use and put together nearly all diagrams I'd need, and ArgoUML has additional features that help with specific diagrams, and also provides code generation from class diagrams.
I've also used Borland Together, and also it's round robin features are nice, I found it really hard to work with unless you used it the way the Borland intended you, which often becomes fustrating
You might want to try Lovely Charts, if your doing something pretty light weight, their free version might work out for you.
For flow charts, I love bubbl.us
Both of these are in flash.
+1 to ForeUI, switching themes + DHTML interactive simulation, really powerful and handy.
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Can anyone point me towards any references that attempt to formulate an economics of software development? In my own research, I discovered a book by Barry Boehm on this, but it seems very awkward and theoretical.
Dependency Structure Matrices seem to offer something worthwhile. Carliss Baldwin has used these in some work on modularization, boundaries, and transaction costs. A lot of it comes off as just common sense, though.
Also, economists have developed something called Behavioral Economics. Is there a "Behavioral Software Engineering" that addresses cognitive biases in developers or groups of developers?
Here's an interesting looking reference:
http://www.amazon.com/Knowledge-Sharing-Software-Development-Comparing/dp/3639100840/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1232979573&sr=1-1
Before Hal Varian became the Chief Economist at Google, he had worked on the economics of information technology at Berkeley, although he did not focus on software development per se. Nevertheless I would recommend a look at his paper on the more general topic from 2001. You can find a more complete list of his research work on his website. Hope that helps.
Software as Capital wasn't a waste of time, though you won't find any math in it and it reads like a PhD thesis because it started as one.
Another review.
I think that what you're looking for might fall under a sociology of software development... sociologists study all modern subjects, and from there you will no doubt find references to an economics of software development if there is one.
Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering by Robert Glass has some dollar amounts associated with some activities (or, at least, percentage of total budget). Don't know if that helps at all, but it's something.
Several years ago I taught an "Economics of E-Commerce" course using Varian's book INFORMATION RULES. His idea of lock-in, though, leads the reader almost towards a drug-addict model of purchaser behaviour and exploitation. This book is more of an economics of e-business than an analysis of the software development process.
In terms of actually making software, there are ideas in the Mythical Man Month well worth knowing about.
The "Applied Information Economics" approach of Douglas Hubbard could be part of what you're looking for. If we assume software development is (often|always|sometimes|???) about supporting decision making by providing (better|more accurate|more up to date|whatever) information, then AIE helps as it's a technique for quantifying the value of better information. Read Hubbard's book How to Measure Anything for a good overview of the idea.
Also, the book Software By Numbers by Mark Denne and Jane Cleland-Huang provides a model for managing software projects by using something they call the "Incremental Funding Methodology". IFM is based on decomposing software projects into features based on the business value created, rather than decomposing them along technical boundaries. They then use a series of calculations based on Discounted Cash Flow (DCF), Net Present Value (NPV), Internal Rate of Return (IRR), etc. to show when in the project lifecycle the project will reach self-funding status, when it will reach "breakeven" and when it will generate a real positive cash return for the organization.
You might also find the Capability Cases book of interest. It doesn't strictly deal with any economic issues in detail, but it's an approach to software specification which attempts to more clearly map software capabilities to business strategy and business issues.