Monday, February 9, 2009

New blog template, the Euler project and SourceForge

New blog template
I have changed the blog's template because the previous one (TicTac Blue) was too narrow. Only 53 characters would fit on each line. This made for either a poor visibility over the scripts or a tedious work of formatting each line to fit within the limit.
Neither was acceptable to me so I switched my Blogger template to Minima Stretch. I'll try to pretty it up over time.

The Euler project
Last Saturday I stumbled upon Project Euler. From the website's own words:
Project Euler is a series of challenging mathematical/computer programming problems that will require more than just mathematical insights to solve. Although mathematics will help you arrive at elegant and efficient methods, the use of a computer and programming skills will be required to solve most problems.
When you register, you can fill in fields for your country and for your programming language. Statistics are updated only for the latter:
- Number of users per programming language
- Average user rating for each language
I joined the Perl community, boosting their number but also pulling down the rating...
There are 231 problems to date and each time you resolve one, you can access the forums and check for the most efficient method that was used. As you progress, you build upon what you have previously learned.
My reasons for joining were to:
  • Cram an additional project in the small amount of spare time that I have
  • Learn the Perl syntax by solving mathematical puzzles
  • Have fun developping mathematical algorithm
Didn't go too far yet, only solved the first two problems.

SourceForge
I also started to scan SourceForge for open source projects in Perl. The goal is to look at Perl code written by proficient users of the language and learn from it. One obvious choice is the Perl core itself but I probably won't be able to contribute before a loooong time.
Do you have any idea of a good project where you can both learn and contribute?

French expression of the day:
"Courir deux lièvres à la fois": To have one's finger in one more pie (litt: to hunt two hares at the same time).

Probable next posts:
  • Improving on twit.pl: fonctions and reading from file
  • How to install and use Google Analytics on your Blogger blog
  • Improving on twit.pl: using more of the Net::Twitter API
  • Improving on twit.pl: Graphical User interface
  • Perl help resources
  • POD

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