Mahboob's Journal

Been in the thick of many a fun-filled action at work and outside. As I write the last post for this calendar year, a lot of thoughts and ideas swarm my mind. Like this one immediately after I wrote the previous sentence - what is a thought and what is an idea, and why am I using two words to describe what goes in my mind? Heck, let me stop it and get ahead with this post. I have mental notes (wow, better phrase) about technology, software development, society and life, management, and creative pursuits. Those will take considerable time to flesh out. For now, I will just report three events I had attended during December.

Asymptotic notation is used to classify and rate algorithms. I have never learnt Algorithms as part of my academics. So, when I started learning the subject outside the hallowed walls of the academic world, the asymptotic notation was a hurdle in the quick learning of algorithms. Yes, people, the asymptotic notation was the main culprit why it took me so long and why I felt very difficult to cross the waters of sorting, searching, graphs and reach data compression and natural language processing. Perhaps computer science students also have the same problem in college. Is there an easier and better way for rating algorithms?

Early this year I had written a Perl program to fetch the links to Rupa Subramanya’s blog entries along with the links inside the posts. I wrote the program as I found that the material she references is quite exhaustive and scholarly. The Perl script, available at https://sites.google.com/site/mahboobh06/home/rupa-blogs-links-perl-program has undergone a few changes since its first version.