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Ben Brandt

Lead UX Engineer at Aleph Alpha

SICP-RS: Exercise 1.8 - Cube Roots

SICP-RS: Exercise 1.8 - Cube Roots

Part 3 of the SICP-RS Series The next coding exercise in Chapter 1 of Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs is Exercise 1.8, which is a slight variation on the 1.7 exercise: Exercise 1.8: Newton’s method for cube roots is based on the fact that if

SICP-RS: Exercise 1.7 - Square Roots, Newton Style

SICP-RS: Exercise 1.7 - Square Roots, Newton Style

Part 2 of the SICP-RS Series The next coding exercise in Chapter 1 of Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs is Exercise 1.7: The good-enough? test used in computing square roots will not be very effective for finding the square roots of very small numbers. Also, in real computers,

SICP-RS: Exercise 1.3 - Sum of Squares

SICP-RS: Exercise 1.3 - Sum of Squares

Part 1 of the SICP-RS Series The first coding exercise we come to in Chapter 1 of Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs is Exercise 1.3: Define a procedure that takes three numbers as arguments and returns the sum of the squares of the two larger numbers. [1] Step

SICP-RS: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs - Rust Edition

SICP-RS: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs - Rust Edition

Welcome to a new series I'm calling "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs - Rust Edition." You may be familiar with the very popular Computer Science textbook, "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs" or "SICP" for short. So many people and websites recommend us as a seminal textbook, I figured

Averages in Rust

Averages in Rust

An important part of learning Rust is figuring out how to use common collections like Vectors, Strings, and HashMaps. The next exercise in the Rust book [https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/second-edition/] calls for some averages: > Given a list of integers, use a vector and return the mean (average), median

Converting Temperatures in Rust

Converting Temperatures in Rust

Next up is my third program written in Rust. All the prompt said was: > Convert temperatures between Fahrenheit and Celsius. This could be simple functions to go back and forth between Celsius and Fahrenheit. But I wanted to try and challenge myself to do handle some user input and use

Twelve Days of Christmas in Rust

Twelve Days of Christmas in Rust

We're going to walk through another program prompt from the Rust Book [https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/second-edition/]: "Print the lyrics to the Christmas carol 'The Twelve Days of Christmas'." I know the topic is a few weeks late, but should hopefully still be helpful! Getting Started Assuming you've installed

Fibonacci in Rust

Fibonacci in Rust

I've started 2018 learning yet another programming language: Rust [https://www.rust-lang.org/]. I love learning new languages. They expose you to new ideas, paradigms, and (in the case of Rust) even new types of programs you can build. Rust pitches itself as: > ...a systems programming language that runs blazingly

Running AngularJS Tests with Jest

Running AngularJS Tests with Jest

Earlier this year, we began the process of using React in our AngularJS app. Luckily, rendering React components within Angular isn’t too hard. We use a component “bridge” based on the approach shared by the Small Improvements team [https://tech.small-improvements.com/2017/01/25/how-to-migrate-an-angularjs-1-app-to-react/] , which is working

Using Ports in Elm

Using Ports in Elm

[https://benbrandt.github.io/elm-ports-presentation/] Last week I had the opportunity to speak at a local meetup here in Portland [http://www.meetup.com/portlandelm/events/234819191/] about my favorite new technology: Elm! Specifically how to use your Elm code in connection with other JavaScript code or libraries. If you

Dictionaries are made from Tries

Dictionaries are made from Tries

cs50 pset 5 was all about data retrieval and memory management, so the challenge was to implement a searchable dictionary that could be used to quickly implement a spell checker on entire books (like the Bible or a Tolstoy novel). Whenever working with data, you're always making tradeoffs between speed

Modifying Images in C

Next up in my CS50 psets was a fun project working with files in C. First up was a challenge to find a hidden clue in a picture. You had to check the RGB values of each pixel in an image and remove the red pixels to reveal the person

Game of Fifteen

I'm slowly catching up on write ups of my cs50 [https://cs50.harvard.edu/] psets, and next up is the next challenge from pset3, the Game of Fifteen [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_puzzle]. It's fairly simple, it draws the current state of the board, you enter which tile

Binary Search, Selection Sort, and Merge Sort

Since I spend most of my day building websites, I don't often get the chance to test my algorithm skills and figure out the most efficient sorting or searching methods. I usually reach for the generic one in whatever library I'm using, but as always, CS50 is challenging me to

The Journey in C Continues - CS50 pset 2

I know it's been awhile, I've been sidetracked with work and fell behind on my classwork, but better late than never! Here are my solutions to the second problem set for CS50: Initials.c This was a simple little program to take in a name as an input, and then

Beginning to Program in C - CS50 pset1

I've been continuing my way through Harvard's CS50 course, and have begun programming in C! Again, since I've already had quite a bit of experience programming, I've been flying through the coursework, but I've been spending plenty of time in the recommended textbooks and diving into C. This is my

Programming in Scratch

I've been working through some more online classes recently, thanks to the awesome curriculum from the Open Source Society [https://github.com/open-source-society/computer-science], and am finally taking a class where I'm learning some C! Already I'm making cool parallels to other languages I work in every day, but that

Film Discussion 30: The Matrix (1999)

Film Discussion 30: The Matrix (1999)

For past discussions, or to sign up for the next episode, visit benjaminbrandt.com/film-discussions [https://benjaminbrandt.com/film-discussions/] Riley, Josh, and Alishia joined me to revisit a film we all remembered fondly, but none had seen in awhile. We can all tell you the movie is still worth watching

Film Discussion 29: Vertigo (1958)

Film Discussion

Film Discussion 29: Vertigo (1958)

For past discussions, or to sign up for the next episode, visit benjaminbrandt.com/film-discussions [https://benjaminbrandt.com/film-discussions/] Josh and I held down the fort this month for a discussion of Vertigo. We continue to explore the relation of Hitchcock's films to our movie-going experience, the difference between love

Swiss Tournament Pairing System - Relational Databases

After many weeks, I've finally been able to finish my Intro to Relational Databases [https://www.udacity.com/course/intro-to-relational-databases--ud197] class! It certainly didn't help that we've been dealing with moving apartments the last few weeks, but this class also kicked my butt big time! I've done plenty of work

Film Discussion 28: Rear Window (1954)

Film Discussion

Film Discussion 28: Rear Window (1954)

For past discussions, or to sign up for the next episode, visit benjaminbrandt.com/film-discussions [https://benjaminbrandt.com/film-discussions/] Josh and Irene (yes Irene finally made it back to the show!) joined me for our discussion of Rear Window, our first Hitchcock film. We had a great discussion on why

Film Discussion 27: Birdman (2014)

Film Discussion

Film Discussion 27: Birdman (2014)

For past discussions, or to sign up for the next episode, visit benjaminbrandt.com/film-discussions [https://benjaminbrandt.com/film-discussions/] Josh and TJ joined me for our discussion of Birdman, and we had a great time talking about fame and trying to figure out why this movie was such a big

Getting Started with Git

I don't know about you, but using Git, especially from the command line, has always been intimidating. At least until recently. I've known for awhile now the importance of source control for your projects and so I've been doing my best to use it. Thanks to the awesome GitHub applications

Put Child Page Content on Parent Page in WordPress

The other day I was working on a documentation site in WordPress and came across an interesting problem. The documentation was lengthy in certain sections, so I wanted to find a way to keep those sections on one page for the reader but allow for a little more organization in

My Intro to Computer Science Final Project

I have finally completed my final project [https://gist.github.com/benbrandt/50296dba5713958bac6d] for the Intro to Computer Science course [https://www.udacity.com/course/cs101] on Udacity! It is a really simple python program that takes a very specific data input and creates a python dictionary to hold the