Recent content by KWiklund

I find Allman easier to read. I can't stand K&R.

It depends on what you want to learn and what you want to do. If you want to learn about how computers *really* work at a fundamental level, then learning assembly language is absolutely crucial. A lot of really interesting things happen at this level, at least if you're at all interested in...

I'm doing a bit of work with a local university. Basically, it's just some an acoustics simulation in CUDA using the image-source method for a microphone array.

Well, an answer to some of your questions might be found on sites like Wikipedia, although they may be higher level than you really want. If you're looking to understand things at the most basic level, you should look at some of the various books on the subject. Mano and Kime's book is one of...

In general, that's something you don't want to do. In most cases, you will end up over-fitting the data, and the resulting curve will fail to correctly generalize when presented with new data. What you really want is to find the lowest order model that accurately captures the trends in what...

It'll depend a bit on the state, IIRC, some are much more lax than others. Here in Canada things are pretty strict though, and generally more uniform across the provinces.

It depends on what you expect to do, and what you think "software engineering" is. As a discipline, it can be pretty serious, and requires a four-year degree: http://www.cas.mcmaster.ca/cas/0template1.php?903...

Python is the most flexible of the three, as you'll find in many applications outside of scientific computing/simulation. It's also free, and can be integrated with Visual Studio. Like MATLAB, it also has an extensive library of application specific tools, which are *mostly* free. It's also a...

TMS 9900 (TI 99/4A) TMS 9995 (Myarc Geneve 9640) 386 Pentium Penitum 4 SandyBridge i7 (Current desktop) IvyBridge i7 (Laptop)

Look up the JPEG2000 standard for an example of a current implementation. The basic idea is that wavelets have better / more natural time-frequency localization than do Fourier-based methods (like DCT), and so are a more natural fit for most sounds/images. This results in a more efficient...

Start by convincing them that the idea will actually work. Most compression algorithms are already pretty good, basic Huffman coding for example, works pretty close to the Shannon limit (the point at which you provably can't compress data any further). With a few clever tricks and...

It's common practice in many devices with updatable firmware to have a block of protected data that stores the original (and functional) firmware. This allows for recovery in the event of a bad update. The manufacturer should be able to tell you more about whether this is a possibility, and...

More than that, it's also helpful for end users. Your target users may not be adept enough to handle even unzipping on their own, much less ensuring other dependencies are correctly installed, icons created, etc. Being able to bundle all of these actions into one executable will save your...

For good coding, I'd look at modularity both horizontally and vertically. Vertical partitioning of your design is desirable since it allows you to separate high- and low-level functionality. For example, splitting desired application behaviour, and lower level services that may be...

Like Ken mentioned, some of what you're asking has to do with the theory of computability, which has to do with whether certain types of problems are theoretically solvable. However, in the most general case, this assumes that your computer is essentially infinite, or you're indifferent as to...