About this blog

Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger is about explorations on better programming. For speed, for robustness, for legibility, for security, for extensibility, and for everything else that’s too often lacking in software.

Subjects I am likely to cover are

• Efficient data structures
• Efficient algorithms
• Space-efficient in-memory (and/or disk) representation of data
• Data compression
• Error detection/correction
• “Deep” computer arithmetic, a.k.a. bit twiddling
• Miscellaneous performance hacks
  
• Coding standards, including portability issues
• Image processing / machine vision
• Fault tolerance

plus whatever comes up!

Not being the next Cox or Stallman should not prevent me, nor anyone else, from seeking betterment of skills, from sharing solutions with others, and from learning from others. And that’s what this blog is really about: iterative refinement of solutions through the exchange of ideas between me and you all, the readers.

The exchange of ideas is crucial because many brains thinking differently are inherently better than just one brain, and much better than many brains thinking too much alike. Let this blog be a praise to lateral, iconoclastic thinking.

I do not intend to limit myself to any particular programming language, though I must admit I greatly favor C/C99 and C++. I also use BASH, Python, assembly language (as a last resort), Mathematica, Scheme, and another handful of programming languages. Therefore, problems (and solutions) discussed will often be C/C++-centric, but I’m quite open to discussing a problem (and its solution) in one of the readers’ favorite language.

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Unless otherwise stated, all text contained within this blog is © Steven Pigeon and may not be reproduced without explicit, written, authorization. Images from wikimedia commons and other sources are used according to their respective licences or by authorization from the rightholders.