random_coder

It's also likely that these guys had already programmed before coming to the class. We all tend to get stuck when programming something for the first time. Second and third times are much smoother experiences.

I'm Indian and I'm deeply frustrated and disappointed with this. My fear is that other mobile networks like Airtel will pick up dumb ass half-baked ideas like this and start charging for data from other non approved sources and for high cost paid wireless Internet to become the norm. I know Reliance is way too greedy, but this really is a new low. While wireless data costs in other countries are coming down, here we see the opposite trend. Fucking disgusting.

In my experience, practicing for competitions like GCJ, Topcoder help a LOT in two ways.

1. Raw coding skills - You'll reach a point where what's in your mind can be coded with very few stupid low level coding bugs like syntax errors, mis-assignments, initialization errors and such. Obviously this doesn't help with higher level issues like program design etc..

2. Algorithmic skills - You'll get VERY good at analyzing algorithmic complexity. You'll thoroughly understand common data structures like lists, vectors, trees, hash maps and other common algorithms.

Both these things are very much relevant to real life programming.

This seems to be the original discussion.

http://jasonrudolph.com/blog/2011/08/09/programming-achievem...

nonlocal is only in python 3.

It's not true. If a poly-time solution is found for NP-hard problem, then it's not necessarily true that other NP-hard problems can be solved in polynomial time. However, if poly-time solution for an NP-hard implies every NP-complete (and thus every problem in NP) has a polynomial time solution.

Neal Stephenson's novels work for me :)

How do you suggest that one should get past the initial hardships in learning clojure, assuming one is willing to put the needed effort? I've always wanted to learn a lisp and clojure seemed good, but couldn't find a good tutorial for lisp beginners.

More generally, in Facebook's social graph, connections can be of different types. For e.g., for a user, 'likes' can be one type of an edge and 'followers'(people he follows) is of a different type, 'followed by'(people who follow him) is yet another type, so on. Many of these types can only be uni directional(e.g., all the above three examples). So, the social graph is a directed graph. Of course, the well known 'friends' connection is a bi-directional type of edge.