[Prereq: Windows, Visual Studio, Eclipse]
[Project link: https://github.com/rfaisal/ThriftStarterCSharpServerJavaClient]
How it started:
Recently I have been introduced with a very cool technology called Apache Thrift. It is originally developed by Facebook and later open-sourced in Apache Software Foundation. It is one of the core building block of the Facebook technology. The technical paper introducing Thrift can be found here.
What is it:
In layman’s terms, Thrift allows an application written in one language (e.g., Java) to exchange data with an application written another language (e.g., C#). Probably the most popular technology in this area is SOAP. Although SOAP is more general, but Thrift has less overhead. In technical terms, Thrift is a Remote Procedure Call (RPC) framework that can be used to develop scalable cross-language services. Thrift is an interface definition language, i.e., you can only write interfaces or pure abstract classes by Thrift. The Thrift compiler can generate corresponding classes and interfaces for any particular language (e.g., C#) from the Thrift interface. The server (e.g., C#) should implement these interfaces and start a service, and the client (e.g., Java) can call the functions of these interfaces by communicating with the service.
Dynamic Programming is a discrete optimization technique. It means, the variables we want to calculate using this method are discrete. As an example, if x is one such variable then is acceptable, but ‘x is a real number between 0 and 1′ is NOT acceptable since there are infinitely many real numbers between 0 and 1. In math terms, we can say that the domain of the variable x is a countable set.
Problems that are solved by dynamic programming are recursive nature. Let’s look at the problem that ask us to calculate the sum up to a number, i.e., if is such a function then . The recursive definition (assuming i is non negative) is following:
Linked list is one of the simplest but most popular datastructures, perhaps because good linked list problems can be solved within 15-20 minutes. Linked list problems are interesting, fun, thought provoking, and easy to describe, which is why they are very common in a programming interview. Microsoft loves asking linked list questions, I mean, you WILL get at least one linked list question if you ever interview with Microsoft!
Wikipedia defines, “a linked list is a data structure consisting of a group of nodes that together represent a sequence”. So, a typical linked list node will have a reference to the next node and a data field. This is called a singly linked list. Therefore, the first node (commonly known as the head) can represent the entire linked list, since one can traverse all the nodes from head by using the next reference. The Java code for the traversal of a linked list is below: Continue reading
Despite all its criticism, singletons still exists today, perhaps because insecure programmers feel the illusion of doing the “right” thing, since they are after all using a design pattern. For those who think, “What experts do, must be right”, I will leave a famous quote by Christopher Hitchens-
Picture all experts as if they were mammals. … Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake.
The popularity of the word ‘singleton’ probably comes from set theory, where it is a set with exactly one element. Similar to its mathematical counterpart, a singleton pattern in software engineering ensures exactly one instance of a class for each running application. This is how you would write a singleton class in Java: Continue reading