Softpanorama (slightly skeptical) Open Source Software Educational Society

May the source be with you, but remember the KISS principle ;-)

Algorithms 2000

[Nov 1, 2000] Updated link for CATAI (thanks to Umberto Ferraro Petrillo <umbfer@libero.it> ). CATAI (Concurrent Algorithms and Data Types Animation over the Internet)  is an original algorithm animation tool based upon the concept of animated data structures. What is even more interesting it uses a distributed object oriented architecture based upon CORBA and it allows algorithms coded in C++ to be easily animated.

[Aug 7, 2000] Yuri Gurevich Annotated Articles  some papers might be interesting. Among them:

• [96] Andreas Blass and Yuri Gurevich Randomizing Reductions of Search Problems
  SIAM J. on Computing 22 (1993), no. 5, 949--975.
• [102] Yuri Gurevich The AMAST Phenomenon The Bull. of Euro. Assoc. for Theor. Computer Sci.
  no. 51, October 1993, 295--299. This humorous article incorporates serious criticism of algebraic and logic approaches to software problems.
• [114] Yuri Gurevich The Value, if any, of Decidability Bulletin of European Assoc. for Theor. Computer Sci.
  No. 55, Feb. 1995, 129--135. A decidable problem can be as hard as an undecidable one for all practical purposes. So what is the value of a mere decidablity result? That is the topic discussed in the paper.
• [123] Yuri Gurevich Platonism, Constructivism, and Computer Proofs vs. Proofs by Hand
  Bull. of Euro. Assoc. of Theor. Computer Science No. 57, Oct. 1995, 145--166.

  In one of Krylov's fables, a small dog Moska barks at the elephant who pays no attention whatsoever to Moska. This image comes to my mind when I think of constructive mathematics versus ``classical'' (that is mainstream) mathematics. In this article, we put a few words into the elephant's mouth. The idea to write such an article came to me in the summer of 1995 when I came across a fascinating 1917 bet between the constructivist Hermann Weyl and George Polya, a classical mathematician. An English translation of the bet (from German) is found in the article.

  Our main objection to the historical constructivism is that it has not been sufficiently constructive. The constructivists have been obsessed with computability and have not paid sufficient attention to the feasibility of algorithms. However, the constructivists' criticism of classical mathematics has a point. Instead of dismissing constructivism offhand, it makes sense to come up with a positive alternative, an antithesis to historical constructivism. We believe that we have found such an alternative. In fact, it is well known and very popular in computer science: the principle of separating concerns.

[Aug 7, 2000] Algorithms and Software for Partitioning Graphs

[Jan 23, 2000]  The MMIXmasters Home Page -- MMIX is the new computer and associated assembly language that Donald Knuth will be using to specify the algorithms in the next edition of his series, The Art of Computer
Programming (TAOCP). Currently (ca 1999) three volumes have been published, and more are in preparation. Knuth will use MMIX as the low-level programming language in the "ultimate" edition of his opus.

This web site is for the volunteers---the MMIXmasters---who are converting all of the programs in TAOCP, Volumes 1 - 3 from the old language MIX to the new language MMIX. Although the primary purpose of this site is to serve the MMIXmasters, non-volunteers are still welcome

[Jan 23, 2000] Album of Algorithms and Techniques by Vladimir Zabrodsky -- This is the collection of the algorithms (at present about 50) from excellent textbooks (Cormen-Leiserson-Rivest, Knuth, Kruse, Marcello-Toth, Sedgewick, Wirth) translated into the REXX language. You can study the Album online or offline. It is packed up by WinZip - find an icon of a little black butterfly on the cover page. Suggested by Tom Moran <tmoran8@yahoo.com>

[Jan 10, 2000] DDJ REGULAR EXPRESSIONS  by Brian W. Kernighan and Rob Pike

Regular expressions, one of the most broadly applicable of programmer's tools, provide a compact and expressive notation for describing patterns of text. They are also algorithmically interesting, easy to implement, and highly useful. Brian and Rob, who are researchers at Bell Labs and the authors of The Practice of Programming, present a compact implementation of grep that uses regular expressions. Additional resources include regexp.txt (listings) and regexp.zip (source code).

[Jan 09, 2000] DDJ FULL-TEXT SEARCHING IN PERL  by Tim Kientzle

Full-text search engines are popular these days, and not just on web sites. Tim shows
how you can build a fast full-text search capability using Perl's built-in database
support. Additional resources include perlsrch.txt (listings) and perlsrch.zip (source code).

[Jan 09, 2000] ALGORITHM ALLEY  by Sasha Gontmakher and Ilan Horn

Doing efficient memory allocation requires first understanding how real-world programs use memory. Sasha and Ilan discuss common patterns of memory usage, and use that to develop a practical memory manager. Additional resources include aa199.txt (listings) and aa199.zip (source code).

Last updated: March 15, 2008