terminology

I've seen the term intrusive used to describe data structures like lists and stacks, but what does it mean? Can you give a code example of an intrusive data structure, and how it differs from a non-intrusive one? Also, why make it intrusive (or, non-intrusive)? What are the benefits? What are the disadvantages? An intrusive data structure is one that requires help from the elements it intends to store in order to store them. Let me reword that. When you put something into that data structure, that "something" becomes aware of the fact that it is in that data structure, in some way. Adding the

I'm learning python and I'm not sure of understanding the following statement : "The function (including its name) can capture our mental chunking, or abstraction, of the problem ." It's the part that is in bold that I don't understand the meaning in terms of programming. The quote comes from http://www.openbookproject.net/thinkcs/python/english3e/functions.html How to think like a computer scientist, 3 edition. Thank you ! Abstraction is a core concept in all of computer science. Without abstraction, we would still be programming in machine code or worse not have computers in the first place.

This question already has an answer here: What is meant by immutable? 17 answers Any one please give the diff between Mutable objects and Immutable objects with example. Ralph Mutable objects have fields that can be changed, immutable objects have no fields that can be changed after the object is created. A very simple immutable object is a object without any field. (For example a simple Comparator Implementation). class Mutable{ private int value; public Mutable(int value) { this.value = value; } //getter and setter for value } class Immutable { private final int value; public Immutable(int

What does "orthogonality" mean when talking about programming languages? What are some examples of Orthogonality? C. Ross Orthogonality is the property that means "Changing A does not change B". An example of an orthogonal system would be a radio, where changing the station does not change the volume and vice-versa. A non-orthogonal system would be like a helicopter where changing the speed can change the direction. In programming languages this means that when you execute an instruction, nothing but that instruction happens (very important for debugging). There is also a specific meaning when

I've done some research. A byte is 8 bits and a word is the smallest unit that can be addressed on memory. The exact length of a word varies. What I don't understand is what's the point of having a byte? Why not say 8 bits? I asked a prof this question and he said most machines these days are byte-addressable, but what would that make a word? Byte : Today, a byte is almost always 8 bit. However, that wasn't always the case and there's no "standard" or something that dictates this. Since 8 bits is a convenient number to work with it became the de facto standard. Word : The natural size with

I am studying patterns and anti-patterns. I have a clear idea about patterns, but I don't get anti-patterns. Definitions from the web and Wikipedia confuse me a lot. Can anybody explain to me in simple words what an anti-pattern is? What is the purpose? What do they do? Is it a bad thing or good thing? coobird Anti-patterns are certain patterns in software development that are considered bad programming practices. As opposed to design patterns which are common approaches to common problems which have been formalized and are generally considered a good development practice, anti-patterns are

Both seem to be used in web development circles, see e.g. HTML5 Cross Browser Polyfills , which says: So here we're collecting all the shims, fallbacks, and polyfills... Or, there's the es5-shim project. In my current project we're using a number of these, and I want to stick them all in the same directory. So, what should I call this directory--- shims , or polyfills ? Arsalan Ahmed A shim is any piece of code that performs interception of an API call and provides a layer of abstraction. It isn't necessarily restricted to a web application or HTML5/CSS3. A polyfill is a type of shim that

from http://docs.oracle.com/javafx/2/api/javafx/scene/control/Cell.html : "The Cell API is used for virtualized controls such as ListView, TreeView, and TableView. A Cell is a Labeled Control, and is used to render a single "row" inside a ListView, TreeView or TableView." Why are they virtualized? When you have a lot of data to display in a Control such as a ListView , you need some way of virtualizing the Nodes created and used. Otherwise it will affect the memory footprint and consequently the time. For example, if you have 10 million data items, you don’t want to create 10 million Nodes. So