Asking users for steps to reproduce bugs, and other dumb ideas

You can fix impossible bugs, if you really try.

Compressing dictionaries with a DAWG

A practical, memory efficient way to store and search large sets of words.

Fast and Easy Levenshtein distance using a Trie

If you have a web site with a search function, you will rapidly realize that most mortals are terrible typists. Many searches contain mispelled words, and users will expect these searches to magically work. This magic is often done using levenshtein distance. In this article, I'll compare two ways of finding the closest matching word in a large dictionary. I'll describe how I use it on rhymebrain.com

A Rhyming Engine

Here's a rhyming engine, written in 1000 lines of C++ code. It uses the freely available Moby dictionary, and full source code is provided.

"Your program is stupid. It doesn't work," my wife told me

Experiment: Deleting a post from the Internet

Once you post something on the Internet, it is hard to get rid of it. As an experiment, I deleted one of my past posts, and I tried to remove all traces of it.

My thoughts on various programming languages

Some ill-informed remarks on various programming languages.

Four ways of handling asynchronous operations in node.js

Javascript was not designed to do asynchronous operations easily. If it were, then writing asynchronous code would be as easy as writing blocking code. Instead, developers in node.js need to manage many levels of callbacks. Today, we will examine four different methods of performing the same task asynchronously, in node.js.

Experiments in making money online

Is it possible to make money on the internet, if you try really hard? I want to find out. I have always been interested in getting money for doing nothing.

What does your phone number spell?

Here, I explain a technique for figuring out which words are in which phone numbers. Full C source code is included.