Editor’s Book Picks & Reviews

What is an Algorithm? The word Algorithm comes from the surname of a medieval Arab mathematician - the same one who invented Algebra. Since then, algorithms have been used to describe various instructions for solving mathematical equations with variables. And, of course, mathematicians dreamed of creating a universal machine that would execute these instructions automatically. In the...

If you need to quickly search a large list, you can use a data structure called Hash Table. To do this, you create an array (Hash array), say, with 100 elements and define a function (Hash Function) that calculates an integer number, say, 10 digits (Hash) from any list element. From this hash, you can use modulo division to obtain the array cell number. This cell is then populated with a pointer...

When students start learning Delegates in C#, they usually can't understand why they were invented at all. Okay, so it's a reference to a method, but why not call the method directly? Teachers explain that this is how we raise the level of abstraction when describing a class, focusing on its specialization and moving the logic for selecting a specific class/method outside. But even if a student...

People that starting to figure out WordPress CMS today (whether they're experienced web developers who can create a website from scratch or newbies who know nothing about website creation) immediately run into a misunderstanding of the concept of WordPress Themes. They quickly find the theme installation section, find a beautiful catalog of themes, select a theme that looks beautiful, install it...

The MCP server is the link between the LLM agent and your data. If you decide to use AI in your work, you'll likely encounter one major problem. No matter how detailed a prompt you write for ChatGPT or Claude, they still can't see all your data, documentation and change history. Because of this, neural networks can handle small tasks, but fully integrating them into a large project is quite a...

jQuery is a library/add-on for JavaScript that played a huge role in its history. It was developed in 2006 by John Resig, an American programmer who worked at Mozilla. At the time, the browser world was in chaos. IE, Firefox, Opera and Chrome all executed JavaScript methods completely differently. jQuery created a stable adapter layer on top of this chaos – it detected which browser you were...

How to learn to type quickly on a keyboard? It's very simple: to type quickly, you need to type with all your fingers and avoid looking at the keyboard (otherwise, you'll spend twice as much time switching your eyes from the keyboard to the screen and back). Basically, you just need to remember which finger presses which key. You'll find ready-made finger placement schemes in the...

Many applications require creation and using groups of related objects. There are two methods for grouping objects: using an Array and using a Collection. Arrays are most convenient for creating and working with a fixed number of strictly typed objects. Collections allow dynamic resizing when inserting or deleting elements. Furthermore, collections offer improved type safety and are optimized for...

When, while allocating memory for the next object, it turns out that there is not enough free memory in the managed heap, the Garbage Collector (GC) is started. If there is no reference to a given object, then the object is deleted and the free space in the heap is compressed to a compact state. From the books you'll know that when searching for unreachable objects, GC doesn't analyze all...

Books on promotion websites in Bing search engine typically begin with the assertion that Bing, while much less popular than Google, still has a huge user base, so it's worth promoting your website in it. Furthermore, ChatGPT and some other LLM chatbots pull information for their responses from Bing, so promoting your website on Bing will definitely pay off. To promote a website on Bing, the...

Interfaces are similar to classes, but they have no implementation at all. In other words, interfaces are a named collection of abstract members. Interfaces represent behavior that a given class or structure can choose to implement. It's another way to implement polymorphism, because in different classes, members of the same interfaces will be implemented differently and therefore will respond...

What is AI agent? I think the simplest way to describe it is that, unlike a chatbot, an AI agent not only talks but also does something. Anthropic defines AI agents more cleverly: Agents are systems in which LLMs dynamically manage their own processes and tool usage, maintaining control over how they perform tasks. The key takeaway from this definition is that inside the Agent is an LLM that...

Unlike lexical analysis, which checks whether words are spelled correctly, syntactic analysis checks whether words are arranged in the correct order. Theoretically, this is quite simple: we just need to write down ALL rules for text building (word arrangement) and then check whether given text complies with these rules. Of course, such rules can only be created for formal languages, such as the...

How do AI detectors determine whether a text has been generated by a language model? Well. they rely on a combination of methods, but the primary one is that the model goes through the text, (virtually) closes each word and attempts to predict it basing on all the other words. If it succeeds in guessing all words with a high probability, the text is generated. Secondary methods, for example,...

Why learn Linux today? If you want to become a system administrator or web server administrator, this question probably doesn't apply to you, since most servers today run Linux. But what if you're studying to become a programmer or data scientist? Here's the main reason: Linux - is a Vibe. When you learn how to play in Linux console, you'll feel like a true hacker, capable of solving any...

Someone may ask: Why draw with JavaScript at all?. This question might arise from people who have already used JS to create websites. On regular websites, JavaScript is typically used to create small interactive elements that can change the page without reloading it. However, alongside JavaScript's use on websites, another major area of ​​its use exists - creating front-ends for various...

Programmers are very lazy people, so they don't want to write the same code several times. That's why they invented Inheritance and Polymorphism. For example, let's say we're creating a game like The Sims. We have a lot of people there and they're all different, but they all have two arms, two legs, one head and they all walk the same way and drink water from a cup. To avoid coding all these...

What is Encapsulation (the main idea of ​​OOP)? Listen to the word Encapsulation. It contains the word Сapsule. In OOP, classes are like capsules. So, the main idea of ​​OOP is that if you create a fairly large program, then the easiest way is to create it in the form of several capsules/classes. Like in the Matrix: there are classes that control birds, classes that control trees,...

AI is a transformer that doesn't store a database of facts (it rather stores a database of abstract weights). Its task is to generate text based on probabilities to ensure logical answer (in relation to its internal logic). If information is insufficient or the question is ambiguously worded, the model can't remain silent - it reconstructs a possible answer. The meaning of the answer is not...

These days, when teams need a new frontend, the conversation rarely starts with the question, What are our limitations and which tool better suits them? More often, it begins with, Let's use React; everyone knows it. Some developers are already arguing that choosing React by default hinders innovation, hinders the development of alternative frameworks and turns the entire ecosystem into a...

Formal Languages ​​are the languages ​​in which we write computer programs. The word formal language itself was coined by Noam Chomsky in the 1950s. He wanted to create an algorithm for accurately extracting meaning from English (natural language)... and failed. Instead, he developed a theory for creating Formal Languages ​​that computer can recognize with 100% accuracy, find errors...

Arrays are the foundation of programming. But what are Arrays? They're lists of things (like numbers or names). For example, we could have an array of students: students = array{Alice, Bob, John...}. Then we could retrieve each name from the array like this: students[0] => Alice. But why? Otherwise, we'd have to create a separate variable for each student, like student1=Alice,...

Regular expressions are needed, for example, to check the data that the user enters into a form on a website. For example, there is an Email field and we need to check whether the user entered an email or some other nonsense. In programming languages, there are special commands, such as check_expression(string, template), i.e. check whether the string matches a given template. But how do we set...

What is the difference between C# and .Net? Sometimes they say: he programs in C# or he programs in .Net - what's the difference? In fact, it's the same. It is essentially one programming language, but divided into 2 parts (or 2 marketing terms) because of Microsoft's unsuccessful business plan. Microsoft's idea was like this: to create a platform (a set of libraries, a framework) called .Net,...

The Turing Machine was invented by Alan Turing in 1936 as an abstract universal computing device. That is, Turing did not even build it or calculate anything on it. But now there are several programs that implement the Turing Machine on a computer. Although it's designed and works quite simply, it turns out that it theoreticaly can implement any algorithm (any program) - for example, Minecraft or...

Here is my list of 3 most interesting books about Mind Mapping for business and work: 1. Mind Mapping: Improve Memory, Concentration, Communication, Organization, Creativity and Time Management This is a book for business leaders and professionals that explains how to use mind maps to think better, learn faster and remember more. I liked...

If you are an engineer or an inventor, if you create something that does not yet exist, you will probably be interested in reading autobiographies of famous inventors. Of course, there are many more biographies written by other people. For example, there are biographies of Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Elon Musk, Isaac Newton. But it is autobiographies in which you read a story from the first...

Here is my list of 3 most interesting books about Tennis: 1. Winning Ugly: Mental Warfare in Tennis What I liked in this book was how the author encouraged tennis players to take a cue from the rock-band Metallica - how they give it their all on stage every night, playing now (at 50 years old) as hard as they ever did, in front of crowds...

Here is my list of 3 most interesting books about Educational Technology: 1. ChatGPT in the Classroom: The Future of Educational AI This book explores why AI tools like ChatGPT are becoming increasingly important in education. The author argues that with ChatGPT education can be adjusted to the unique needs and learning styles of each...

Here is may list of 3 most interesting non-fiction books about Moon exploration: 1. One Giant Leap: The Impossible Mission That Flew Us to the Moon This book gives an interesting look at the details of the Apollo project. The Moon race of the 1960s was as revolutionary as any other affair of that decade. It was the largest civilian project...

Here is may list of 3 most interesting books about battlefield drones: 1. Swarm Troopers: How small drones will conquer the world This book begins with the symbolic Farnborough International Airshow 2014, where the F-35 Lightning II fighter jet from Lockheed Martin was supposed to be presented. But it was not finished in time and the show...

Here is my list of 3 most interesting books about Manchester United: 1. Alex Ferguson: My Autobiography This is Alex Ferguson's second book, after Managing My Life, which he wrote while still an active manager. This book is not only an autobiography, but also an explanation of why he retired. Although his retirement came as a surprise to...

Here is my list of 3 most interesting books about Robotic Process Automation (RPA): 1. The Robotic Process Automation Handbook: A Guide to Implementing RPA Systems This book is a comprehensive guide to using RPA for business. It starts with the basics, specifically a simple high-level classification of RPA systems/approaches. These are 1....

Here is my list of 5 most interesting books about artificial intelligence for Health: 1. The Future of Healthcare: Humans and Machines Partnering for Better Outcomes This book attempts to imagine a near future in which our health is monitored by virtual assistants. For example, it follows Diane, a 53-year-old librarian. Every morning at...

Here is my list of 3 most interesting books about wind energy: 1. Wind Energy Explained: Theory, Design and Application This book is based on a course Wind Energy Engineering that has been taught at the University of Massachusetts since the mid-1970s. It describes the basics of wind energy, in particular the design and operation of a wind...

Here is my list of 3 most interesting books about solar energy: 1. Solar Energy: The Physics and Engineering of Photovoltaic Conversion, Technologies and Systems This book covers all aspects of solar energy from the photoelectric effect to the energy balance of the Earth. In particular, it provides interesting statistics on the dynamics of...

Here is my list of 3 most interesting books about Recycling tech: 1. Reduce, Reuse, Reimagine: Sorting Out the Recycling System This book attempts to answer the question of why the recycling system in the United States sucks (in comparison to some other countries). The author believes that the reason is the lack of a central coordinating...

Here is may list of 5 most interesting books about AI for those who want to understand it: 1. On Intelligence The book intertwines the biography of the author (Jeff Hawkins) and his theory about the work of the cerebral cortex. And perhaps in his theory, two central ideas can be distinguished. The first is that the brain works with...