Questions tagged [theory]
Theoretical question deal with topics that do not generally have immediate practical uses. Please be careful when using this tag: your question may be more appropriate for the Computer Science Stack Exchange site.
164 questions
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Why is the 8-bit exponent of the IEEE 754 32-bit float not byte-aligned?
There is already a prior question dealing with why certain bit-widths were chosen (although I do find it somewhat insufficient, but that's another topic), but what strikes me as unusual is how the ...
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What was COBOL's syntax first described in?
Nowadays, it's very common to use BNF (or extensions thereof) to describe the syntaxes of various programming languages or their constructs. What was the situation like 60+ years ago? COBOL and BNF ...
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Concatenating strings given a BNF grammar
<Definition> ::= <Name> <LeftPar> <param> <RightPar>
<Name> ::= <Letter><LetterTail>
<LetterTail> ::= <Letter><LetterTail> | ‘’
A ...
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Is a 'base' file always necessary when doing a merge?
Are there any algorithms that can do or suggest merges without requiring the "base" file, the most recent common ancestor of the two file versions that we want to merge?
Is a manual merge ...
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NP-complete problem (subset sum) featured in Netflix series "Suits" S1 E8? [closed]
In the Netflix series Suits, Season 1, Episode 8 (Identity Crisis), the legal team, with the help of a hacker, is tasked with proving that a business magnate embezzled funds, splitting them and ...
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What is an immutable object anyway?
The most popular answer is - it is an object whose state does not change after creation.
What does it actually mean?
My understanding is that any method call on the object should give the same result. ...
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How can lossless compression ever exist?
If all data is essentially just a bit string, then all data can be represented as a number. Because a compression algorithm, c(x), must reduce or keep the same length of the input, then the compressed ...
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How far can one debug a low-level API in closed-source environments?
Assume a low-level API is provided without source code (e.g. DirectX).
The API provides a virtualization of hardware resources (GPU, CPU, audio card, etc.), which enables the user to call hardware-...
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Cohesion and coupling possible combination in software
I know what we mean by cohesion and coupling in software. And generally the best practice is to achieve high cohesion with low coupling.
It seems to me though that they are inter-related. I.e. you ...
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What's the difference between a pure function that expects a complex object of a particular type and object oriented programming?
What's the difference between writing OO code that depends on internal state and writing a pure function that expects an argument that is a data structure of a specific type (and thus has internal ...
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Why is the If-then-else, while loop and for loop a structured programming control structure?
When defining McCabe's essential complexity, the idea of a structured programming control structure is present. I don't understand why an if-then-else, a while loop or a for loop can be reduced to a ...
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How to reflect "functional quality" when implementing ISO 250XX, which is quality model of non-functional requirements?
We want to adopt ISO 25000 quality model, which explicitly states it does not deal with functional requirements (i.e. its Functional suitability is truly about assessing how the functions fit in the ...
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How does the classic proof for the halting problem work?
I've looked up a lot proofs for the halting problem (that are basic enough that I can understand what they are trying say ^^) but for all of them I don't get their last step right before they pull the ...
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Academic question about table design
I just had an argument with my professor about surrogate key usage in my project's database design. My professor insisted that a primary key (natural or surrogate) should not ever be exposed, even in ...
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Always better to wait?
I've been wondering if this concept has a name and a consolidated theory behind.
If you need to build software, but you don't need it right now,
it's always better to wait because the technology ...
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