I love reading about random things sometimes. Browsing stackoverflow and clicking around i ended on a post about Fuzzy Text Searches that mentioned Levenshtein distance, and i jumped over to wikipedia to learn what the heck that is.
In information theory and computer science, the Levenshtein distance is a metric for measuring the amount of difference between two sequences
For example, the Levenshtein distance between “kitten” and “sitting” is 3, since the following three edits change one into the other, and there is no way to do it with fewer than three edits:
1. kitten → sitten (substitution of ’s’ for ‘k’
2. sitten → sittin (substitution of ‘i’ for ‘e’)
3. sittin → sitting (insert ‘g’ at the end).
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levenshtein_distance
NEAT! So something used in order to determine how similar/different two strings are, like a speller checker.
Turns out there is a www.levenshtein.net that shows explains it, has some demos, and explains how to impliment it. On the front page there is even a nice little matrix that showcases how it decides how ‘change’ count
Babbles
Wow 2nd blog post. That is +1 more posts that I’ve ever done in the last 6 years.
I really enjoy reading, but when it comes to tech books i don’t often pick them up. Those i do pick up i either skim or just find what i need and put it down again.
So i’m going to challenge myself to not only finish some sort of tech book but to read it carefully enough to write about it here. The book I’ve chosen is called “Head First Object-Oriented Analysis and Design“. Its geared towards people who get bored just reading a lot of technical stuff *raises hands*. Its pretty lame in some of its attempts. I was introduced to the ‘Head First’ book series because my dad had picked up a java version without realizing that it had lots of hand holding and pretty pictures. Its great for people who don’t know how things really work *raises hand again* rather then a programmer who knew C looking to learn some OOP concepts (like my dad).
A part of a page from the book "Head First Object-Oriented Analysis and Design", you can see why it might annoy the hell of someone looking for a reference manual or a technical how-to.
It creates little stories of programming projects trying to show you some good concepts and failures in an attempt to teach you some of the basic concepts. I’ved work with OOP concepts before. I’m currently using the PDSA Framework where everything is wrapped up in classes and objects. I *USE* it but i don’t understand it enough to even talk about it let alone start from the ground up. If i had to write my own i’d make a lot of mistakes that i probably wouldn’t have time to correct.
BTW i’m reading it through Safari Books Online because it allows me to skim/search various books without having to pay $50 - $75 bucks a pop. It also allows me to access them at home/work/school without having to lug around a big book. 
Babbles, Tech Book Challenge
OOP, Sarfari Online, Tech Book Challege
If you can do something someone can’t do (or understand hows it done) you can come off as ’smart’. I’ve had people tell me ‘you’re so smart’, but i’m usually of the opinion that i can just do it better than them because they never tried to do it. (Oh yes, the name is angst-driven. Sorry about that).
So i’m ‘Smartest of the Stupid People’ and i’m going to try and post about intersting/new things i’ve learned while learning .NET and any tips and tricks i learned about Visual Studio. I know i can ‘do’ certain things in programming but i rarely really analyze what is it i’m doing and if i had to explain it i’ll probably sound pretty retarded.
So its a documention of my journey to becoming a ‘real’ programmer and forcing me to think about what i’m doing enough to even write about it. You probably won’t hear me babble on about advance concepts like Domain Driven Design, but you may here my bastardize trying to recap what i think interfaces are all about.
All in all i’m sure i’ll look back at this in a few years and laugh (or cry) and at least feel i got a little bit father than i was before.
As i side note. When i was about 15 i used this line as a tagline in a chatroom i used to run and people thought i was calling them stupid and nearly staged a revolt. Bah People.
Babbles
Babbles