In statically typed programming languages, datatypes play a very important role. Some of common datatypes are int, float, char, double, etc. Different datatypes have different functionalities and we use them depending on our requirements. In modern C++ code, the type “size_t” is used a lot of instead of int or unsigned int. It appears in many different scenarios like parameters to string functions, standard template library (STL), etc. Ever wondered why we need to use it in the first place? Does it have any real advantage? Continue reading “Why Do We Need size_t?”
Category: Programming
How To Setup Nginx For Load Balancing?
Let’s say that you have a nice idea for a website and you want to host it somewhere to make it available to the users. To do this, you put your website on a server somewhere on the cloud. Then, you purchase a domain name and you redirect all the requests to this server. But you soon realize that you are getting too much traffic, and that your server won’t be able to handle all of it by itself. So you go ahead and get three more servers. Now you want make sure all your servers share the load in a nice way. How will you do that? We would like to avoid the situation where one of the servers is getting all the traffic, and the remaining servers are getting a small amount. That wouldn’t serve our purpose here! So how we do we handle this? Continue reading “How To Setup Nginx For Load Balancing?”
What Is Relative Entropy?
In this blog post, we will be using a bit of background from my previous blog post. If you are familiar with the basics of entropy coding, you should be fine. If not, you may want to quickly read through my previous blog post. So coming to the topic at hand, let’s continue our discussion on entropy coding. Let’s say we have a stream of English alphabets coming in, and you want to store them in the best possible way by consuming the least amount of space. So you go ahead and build your nifty entropy coder to take care of all this. But what if you don’t have access to all the data? How do you know what alphabet appears most frequently if you can’t access the full data? The problem now is that you cannot know for sure if you have chosen the best possible representation. Since you cannot wait forever, you just wait for the first ‘n’ alphabets and build your entropy coder hoping that the rest of the data will adhere to this distribution. Do we end up suffering in terms of compression by doing this? How do we measure the loss in quality? Continue reading “What Is Relative Entropy?”
What Is Entropy Coding?
Entropy Coding appears everywhere in modern digital systems. It is a fundamental building block of data compression, and data compression is pretty much needed everywhere, especially for internet, video, audio, communication, etc. Let’s consider the following scenario. You have a stream of English alphabets coming in and you want to store them in the best possible way by consuming the least amount of space. For the sake of discussion, let’s assume that they are all uppercase letters. Bear in mind that you have an empty machine which doesn’t know anything, and it understands only binary symbols i.e. 0 and 1. It will do exactly what you tell it to do, and it will need data in binary format. So what do we do here? One way would be to use numbers to represent these alphabets, right? Since there are 26 alphabets in English, we can convert them to numbers ranging from 0 to 25, and then convert those numbers into binary form. The biggest number, 25, needs 5 bits to be represented in binary form. So considering the worst case scenario, we can say that we need 5 bits to represent every alphabet. If have to store 100 alphabets, we will need 500 bits. But is that the best we can do? Are we perhaps not exploring our data to the fullest possible extent? Continue reading “What Is Entropy Coding?”
The Cost Of Abstraction In Python
People who have been coding for years will tell you that abstraction is always a good thing. It makes the system more robust and tolerant to future changes. Recently, I’ve been working on some Python libraries that wrap C extensions. While working on those libraries, a couple of interesting things came up.This blog post is about one of those things, and how it affects the speed. When we talk about abstraction, we tend to think about hierarchies, encapsulations, and robustness in general. But what about the ways in which they are implemented underneath? Different languages implement this in their own way, and they are not always optimal. This is what we are going to talk about. Let’s dive in, shall we? Continue reading “The Cost Of Abstraction In Python”
Why Is Python Slow?
When people talk about speed in the world of programming languages, they usually center the discussion around compiled vs interpreted languages. In this post, we will discuss two of the most famous languages on this planet, Python and C. I was recently playing around with this and I made a few pleasant discoveries. So I thought I should share them here. One of the biggest reasons as to why Python is slower than C is because of the dynamic typing feature in Python. While it may be true that dynamically typed programming languages are slower than statically typed languages, it may not be the major factor slowing down your Python code. The dynamic typing feature of programming languages like Python makes the interpreters harder to optimize. I guess this is the cost of having an extremely beginner-friendly language! But one thing to note is that there is a big difference between interpreter being harder to optimize and your code being slow. We’ve had years of research focusing on the best way to perform type checking at runtime in these languages, thus making this overhead negligible. So how do we understand why Python code is slower than C code? How do we write Python code that’s not slow? Continue reading “Why Is Python Slow?”
Functors In C++
When you look at the word “functor”, the first thing that comes to mind is that it looks very similar to “function”. The word actually comes from a field called category theory, which is an abstract branch of mathematics. A category basically consists of objects that are linked to each other in certain ways. This is an extremely simplistic view of a very complex field of mathematics. But basically, that’s what it’s about! As it turns out, this mathematical concept is really useful in the world of programming. If used in the right way, it can be a very powerful tool in your coding arsenal. So what exactly is a functor in the context of programming? How do we use it? Continue reading “Functors In C++”
A Beginner’s Look At Lambda Calculus
Back in school, you must remember studying differential and integral calculus. Now what on earth is lambda calculus? Well, lambda calculus is basically a simple notation for functions and applications in mathematics and computer science. It has a significant impact in the field of programming language theory. It forms the basis for all the modern functional programming languages like Haskell, Scala, Erlang, etc. The main idea here is to apply a function to an argument and forming functions by abstraction. The good thing about lambda calculus is that the syntax is quite sparse, which makes it an elegant notation for representing functions. Here, we get a well-formed theory of functions as rules of computation. We will discuss this further soon. Even though the syntax of lambda calculus is sparse, it is really flexible and expressive. This feature makes is particularly useful in the field of mathematical logic. So what exactly is lambda calculus? How do we understand it? Continue reading “A Beginner’s Look At Lambda Calculus”
Static vs Dynamic Typing
If you are a programmer, you must have heard the terms “static typing” and “dynamic typing” being thrown around a lot. When we talk about programming languages, this is an important feature that tends to significantly affect the programs written in that language. In the spirit of simplicity, I will try to keep this post as code-free as possible. Actually, you don’t have to know any programming language in particular to understand this concept. If you are doing a hobby project or doing something simple, this will not come into picture and it will not affect your code as such. As you build bigger systems, static and dynamic typing will become a big concern. If you are not fully aware of the limitations of a given programming language, you will end up spending a lot of time in code maintenance. So it’s always good to know some of these things. Alright, so what exactly is it about? Does it really matter that much? Continue reading “Static vs Dynamic Typing”
Exploring The Hidden C++ Features
People have been using C++ for a long time now and most of us think that we are pretty well versed with it. Interestingly enough, as we spend more time with something, we keep discovering more things about it. I love it when the thing you have been using for so long turns out to have powerful hidden features. I encounter a lot of C++ in my day-to-day life and so I end up spending a lot of time with it. Over time, as I delved deeper into C++, I came across some abstruse features, some of which really surprised me! So I thought I should write about them. Let’s see what they are. Continue reading “Exploring The Hidden C++ Features”
Perpetual Enigma 