Programming Corner - Programming vs Code

On Mon, 3 Feb 2025 21:13:03 -0000 (UTC), Steve Carroll <"Steve

Post by Steve Carroll
This is a simple exercise that asks you to attempt a task without *any*
help. The task is to identify all the steps required to take a name...
'Rodney Allen Rippy'
... extract from it the first letter of each of the three subnames, put
R.A.R

I would treat 'Rodney Allen Rippy' as a string, minus the single quotes.
I'd loop through the string and build a new string, taking the first
letter, adding the period, then taking the letter that immediately
follows a space, add a period, and so on until I reach the end of the
string.

Such a simplistic approach falls flat when prefixes and suffixes are
introduced, such as Mr./Mrs./Ms. and or Jr./Sr./Esq. I presume that
those all need to be ignored, which is something that people might take
for granted but computers need to be told what to do.

Post by Steve Carroll
This portion is not about code, IOW... it's not thinking about how a
computer needs to be instructed to do it. This is about every step you
can think of required to do it that you can explain to another person
(or to yourself). You can easily perform this task in a few seconds
without the help of a computer or code. So how do you it? Are you
'thinking' about the steps? Or are they *so* obvious you don't need to?
Now, I'm asking you to think about them and write them down, in order of
necessity. What is that first step (some may overlook it or subsequent
steps)? For the purposes of this discussion, a "step" is something you
do that can't easily be reduced any further, for which, within reason,
there are no sub-steps. For example, if you're sitting in your kitchen
with an empty glass in front of you, to fill it with milk stored in your
1. Stand up
2. Walk to the fridge
3. Open the fridge door
4. Locate (visually 'isolate') the milk
5. Grab the milk container with your hand
6. Remove the container from the fridge
7. Walk back to where the glass is
8. Open the container
9. Pour milk into the glass

I think I just heard my mother asking, "Were you planning on putting the
milk back in the fridge and closing the door?"

Post by Steve Carroll
Shifting gears... as we go back to our 'initials' example, after you've
made notes on 'how you would do it as a human' (like we just did with
the milk), bring in the concept of trying to explain such steps to a
computer using a language it can understand and interpret. Obviously,
*you* would need to have *some* level of understanding of that language
while trying to use it to convey the idea to the computer.
For this particular task, how much of the language do you actually need
to know to perform the above task, what's the minimum requirement?

For me, string handling would be an important aspect, so I'd check to
see what's available there. How much of a typical language does this
exercise need? Not much, I'd say. It feels like it's close to entry
level.

Post by Steve Carroll
Without knowing the language, how would you know? How could you find
out? In the language you'd choose, does it have methods that seem to
coincide with any of your steps (how 'English-like' is the language)?

Brock McNuggets

2025-02-04 00:42:41 UTC

Post by Kelly Phillips
On Mon, 3 Feb 2025 21:13:03 -0000 (UTC), Steve Carroll

This would add a period at the end... which he does not have.

My method... tested in ApplesScript:

1) Set a variable (theName) to the name.
2) Set the initial string to blank
3) Loop with i for each word of theName
a) add the first letter of word i to the initial string
b) if i <> count of words in theName then add a period
4) display or save or return the initials.

Post by Kelly Phillips
Such a simplistic approach falls flat when prefixes and suffixes are
introduced, such as Mr./Mrs./Ms. and or Jr./Sr./Esq. I presume that
those all need to be ignored, which is something that people might take
for granted but computers need to be told what to do.

There could be a check to see if the word is one of those words.

I think I just heard my mother asking, "Were you planning on putting the
milk back in the fridge and closing the door?"

Very much so. Here is my full and very simple AppleScript solution.

repeat with i from 1 to count of words in theName
end repeat

--
Specialist in unnecessary details and overcomplicated solutions.

Kelly Phillips

2025-02-04 01:08:28 UTC

Post by Kelly Phillips
On Mon, 3 Feb 2025 21:13:03 -0000 (UTC), Steve Carroll

This would add a period at the end... which he does not have.

It would not because there is no letter following a space at the end.

<snip>

An alternative would be to split the string on the spaces, creating an
array, then loop through the array to grab the first letter and add the
required periods, building a new string.

Both methods described above are nondestructive to the original string,
which I think is generally important.

Brock McNuggets

2025-02-04 01:26:40 UTC

Post by Kelly Phillips
On Mon, 3 Feb 2025 21:13:03 -0000 (UTC), Steve Carroll

This would add a period at the end... which he does not have.

It would not because there is no letter following a space at the end.

Fair enough. My mistake.

Post by Kelly Phillips
<snip>
An alternative would be to split the string on the spaces, creating an
array, then loop through the array to grab the first letter and add the
required periods, building a new string.
Both methods described above are nondestructive to the original string,
which I think is generally important.

Oh, definitely. Mine does not alter the name string.

--
Specialist in unnecessary details and overcomplicated solutions.

ANTONIO LEON ROMO

2025-02-04 01:58:40 UTC

Post by Kelly Phillips
On Mon, 3 Feb 2025 21:13:03 -0000 (UTC), Steve Carroll

This would add a period at the end... which he does not have.

It would not because there is no letter following a space at the end.

Fair enough. My mistake.

That's what your father said when he didn't pull out,
Michael.
Your parents hated you didn't they Michael Glasser.

Steve Carroll

2025-02-04 15:44:43 UTC

Post by Kelly Phillips
On Mon, 3 Feb 2025 21:13:03 -0000 (UTC), Steve Carroll <"Steve

If I'm following you correctly (and I adhere to what 'editor' FTR caught
me on ;) - in JS it'd be something like:

function createInitials(name) {
let initials = ''

for (let i = 0; i < name.length; i++) {
if (i === 0 || name[i - 1] === ' ') {
initials += name[i] + '.'
}
}

return initials
}

That's probably one of the fastest ways in JS, albeit harder to 'see'
(Apd will now give me 'the side-eye' ;)

Those last 9 words are really 'the thing' here. You just answered the
why (people might take things for granted) but the how... 'How does it
differ from a 'human' list?'... is the real question. The human list may
not contain enough granularity to make the connections between
programming and coding 'easy enough' to see, especially for those new to
programming languages, it's 'a big disconnect' for many.

The disconnect comes in varying levels. Your approach probably uses
things similar to what I used in that function above, but people who are
newer to writing these 'modern' scripting languages are more likely to
use things with additional layers of abstraction:

let createInitials = name => name.split(' ').map(i => i[0]).join('.') + '.'

That's slower than the above. There's a method called 'match':

function createInitials(name, tp = true) {
let res = (name.match(/\b\w/g) || []).join('.')
return tp ? res + '.' : res
}

That one's for the 'editor' as it cover 'tp' or 'no tp' (and that
doesn't stand for 'toilet paper' ;)

There are other ways this can be done is JS, as well (i.e. 'reduce',
'exec', 'matchAll', etc.).

Unless you're doing a million names, speed probably won't be an issue so
these 'modern tradeoffs' have become popular. Even 'matchAll', probably
the slowest (I think I once clocked it at ~10 times slower than the for
loop version) isn't slow unless you're pounding it. There's also 'the
'readability factor', with the exception of 'map', the fat arrow version
is quite 'English-like'. IMO that one is arguably the most likely to
jibe with someone's 'human' list' if they thought of 'splitting' the
words up in order to easily 'isolate' the first char of each.

I think I just heard my mother asking, "Were you planning on putting the
milk back in the fridge and closing the door?"

;)

That gets back to what I mentioned above: How granular is your 'human'
list? Too coarse and you'll start the hair pulling ;)

Apd

2025-02-04 19:17:24 UTC

Post by Steve Carroll
If I'm following you correctly (and I adhere to what 'editor' FTR caught
function createInitials(name) {
let initials = ''
for (let i = 0; i < name.length; i++) {
if (i === 0 || name[i - 1] === ' ') {
initials += name[i] + '.'
}
}
return initials
}
That's probably one of the fastest ways in JS, albeit harder to 'see'
(Apd will now give me 'the side-eye' ;)

Will I? You could replace the C-style "for" loop to be more readable
with:

for (let i in name)

but you'd have to change the comparison of the first element because
"i" is a string representation of the index. It needs to be:

i === "0"

or:

Number(i) === 0

or, using loose equality:

i == 0

"i - 1" is ok because of coercion but "i + 1" would fail because of
concatenation!

Post by Steve Carroll
[...] people who are newer to writing these 'modern' scripting
languages are more likely to use things with additional layers of
let createInitials = name => name.split(' ').map(i => i[0]).join('.') + '.'
That's slower than the above.

As is likely for the way I suggested.

Post by Steve Carroll
function createInitials(name, tp = true) {
let res = (name.match(/\b\w/g) || []).join('.')
return tp ? res + '.' : res
}
That one's for the 'editor' as it cover 'tp' or 'no tp' (and that
doesn't stand for 'toilet paper' ;)

"TP for my bunghole" -- Beavis (of Beavis & Butthead fame)

Post by Steve Carroll
There's also 'the 'readability factor', with the exception of 'map',
the fat arrow version is quite 'English-like'.

Those last two examples aren't so readable, especially for those
familiar will older programming languages.

Steve Carroll

2025-02-04 20:22:18 UTC