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My favorite "toys", by far, are those happy, cheerful, friendly implementations of famous problems, that make for a fun but educative learning experience. It m

My favorite "toys", by far, are those happy, cheerful, friendly implementations of famous problems, that make for a fun but educative learning experience. It may not be as huge in scope, but allow me to plug my own initiative: https://www.latenightsnack.io https://www.latenightsnack.io I set out to replicate the joy of reading through code listings in old magazines, and present seemingly-complicated problems in a simple and concise way. Some of the problems I will approach in the future are text and image compression, compilers, chains, http servers, and so on. I would love if you had a look!

chris_st 9y ago
Pretty cool idea (though I'd personally tone down the intensity of the yellow background, and use a higher contrast font color... whoever came up with the "black is bad" meme will be really sorry when they get older and their vision deteriorates!). One story from "back in those days"... I worked at a small computer store in 1980/1981, and one of my fellow co-workers submitted a program to one of those magazines, and they printed it! Well, they mis-printed it, and then mis-printed the correction he sent in :-)
- zenojevski 9y ago
  That's how you patch software :) An open, if somewhat artisanal, process. I have toned down the intensity of the yellow background, and increased text contrast. I hope this improves!
bogomipz 9y ago
This looks great. Will you be writing about or discussing your stack machine implementation on the blog or elsewhere then? The annotations are nice but I would be interested in hearing/reading more. I've got it bookmarked. Cheers.
- zenojevski 9y ago
  One of the reasons I set on this "espresso" format is that I wouldn't be able to find enough time for a more expansive write-up. I hoped to compensate by including plenty of links, and making it easily modifiable. Maybe I should include a comment system? What about asking questions via GitHub issues? :)
tomxor 9y ago
> and present seemingly-complicated problems in a simple and concise way. I think concise is underrated, not terse necessarily, just minimal code devoid of distracting optimisations and architecture. It's so nice to come across those < 100 line _working_ implementations that you can focus on and internalise as a working model of the algorithm, I've found Rosetta Code a good place to find these (of varying quality though). I'm not from that era of code listings in magazines but I really like idea and format of your site, earmarked for some bedtime reading :) please write more.
- zenojevski 9y ago
  Thanks! That was exactly my intent. I added links to jsbin now, so it should be easy to quickly experiment with the code. I have a few ideas (http server, text compression, blockchain) but I'd like to hear some from you. Any preference on what you would like to see in the future?
Jeremysr 9y ago
Just finished the stack machine, very nice work. Love the presentation and the code is beautiful. Looking forward to future snacks!
sassy_samurai 9y ago
>> This collection attempts to provide recreate that same feeling ... I think the word "provide" should not be there. Anyway, I think this is a brilliant idea. I don't mind the yellow background but I think the main text font could be darker for better visual contrast. A favicon won't hurt too.
- zenojevski 9y ago
  Thanks (and thanks for the typo as well)! I toned down the color theme, and increased contrast. I did not cache-bust, so you might have to clear your cache. I hope this makes it better!

chris_st 9y ago

Pretty cool idea (though I'd personally tone down the intensity of the yellow background, and use a higher contrast font color... whoever came up with the "black is bad" meme will be really sorry when they get older and their vision deteriorates!). One story from "back in those days"... I worked at a small computer store in 1980/1981, and one of my fellow co-workers submitted a program to one of those magazines, and they printed it! Well, they mis-printed it, and then mis-printed the correction he sent in :-)

zenojevski 9y ago
That's how you patch software :) An open, if somewhat artisanal, process. I have toned down the intensity of the yellow background, and increased text contrast. I hope this improves!

bogomipz 9y ago

This looks great. Will you be writing about or discussing your stack machine implementation on the blog or elsewhere then? The annotations are nice but I would be interested in hearing/reading more. I've got it bookmarked. Cheers.

zenojevski 9y ago
One of the reasons I set on this "espresso" format is that I wouldn't be able to find enough time for a more expansive write-up. I hoped to compensate by including plenty of links, and making it easily modifiable. Maybe I should include a comment system? What about asking questions via GitHub issues? :)

tomxor 9y ago

> and present seemingly-complicated problems in a simple and concise way. I think concise is underrated, not terse necessarily, just minimal code devoid of distracting optimisations and architecture. It's so nice to come across those < 100 line _working_ implementations that you can focus on and internalise as a working model of the algorithm, I've found Rosetta Code a good place to find these (of varying quality though). I'm not from that era of code listings in magazines but I really like idea and format of your site, earmarked for some bedtime reading :) please write more.

zenojevski 9y ago
Thanks! That was exactly my intent. I added links to jsbin now, so it should be easy to quickly experiment with the code. I have a few ideas (http server, text compression, blockchain) but I'd like to hear some from you. Any preference on what you would like to see in the future?

Jeremysr 9y ago

Just finished the stack machine, very nice work. Love the presentation and the code is beautiful. Looking forward to future snacks!

sassy_samurai 9y ago

>> This collection attempts to provide recreate that same feeling ... I think the word "provide" should not be there. Anyway, I think this is a brilliant idea. I don't mind the yellow background but I think the main text font could be darker for better visual contrast. A favicon won't hurt too.

zenojevski 9y ago
Thanks (and thanks for the typo as well)! I toned down the color theme, and increased contrast. I did not cache-bust, so you might have to clear your cache. I hope this makes it better!