Last time, we introduced the concept of a priority queue data structure, and illustrated it with a couple of simple implementations using an array: firstly by adding new items at the end, and then getting the highest priority item by searching through the array; secondly by maintaining the array in sorted order by priority, forcing new items to be inserted in the correct position in the array, and getting an item is merely removing it from the end of the array. I called these fast insertion/slow deletion and slow insertion/fast deletion implementations. […]
READ MOREFirst up in my “reprints from The Delphi Magazine, cast in JavaScript” posts must be the priority queue. It is after all, an important data structure, can be implemented quickly (although perhaps in not a very efficient manner), and introduces an excellent algorithm, the heap. […]
READ MOREFor some time now, I’ve been pondering whether or not to post my old articles from The Delphi Magazine here on my blog. I supplied Chris Frizelle, the editor, with algorithm articles for a good nine years from November 1997 (with an eight month hiatus while I worked at Microsoft: at the time they frowned upon that kind of thing, especially writing about Delphi and not C# – eek!), under the soubriquet Algorithms Alfresco. It would not be hard to discern that that the early ones formed the basis for my algorithms book. […]
READ MOREIn less than a week, after almost ten years (!), the GoDaddy hosting plan I had for this site will expire. Transferring it and all its existing content to Microsoft Azure (and securing it along the way) has been a journey and a half, let me tell you, and over the past month or so – you may have noticed when stuff didn’t work – I’ve been finalizing all the tweaks I had to do. For future reference, here in no particular order were some of the last minute fine-tuning I had to do. […]
READ MORESo, recently I upgraded my main laptop to the latest-but-one XPS 13. All fine and dandy, but as I started to reinstall stuff, I noticed that my license for VMWare was a little (he says discreetly) out of date. And they wanted $149 to upgrade. Normally that’s fine, but it has to be said my use of virtual machines is getting a bit long in the tooth. […]
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