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	<title>Programming for Scientists</title>
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	<link>http://www.programming4scientists.com</link>
	<description>Software development wisdom and common-sense for the scientist-programmer</description>
	<pubDate>Mon, 05 Jan 2009 16:38:48 +0000</pubDate>
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		<title>Order notation, or how to tell how good your algorithm is</title>
		<link>http://www.programming4scientists.com/2009/01/order-notation-or-how-to-tell-how-good-your-algorithm-is/</link>
		<comments>http://www.programming4scientists.com/2009/01/order-notation-or-how-to-tell-how-good-your-algorithm-is/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 05 Jan 2009 16:38:48 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Rich</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[More advanced topics]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[algorithms]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[order notation]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[programming]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[science]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.programming4scientists.com/?p=394</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[
How can you tell if your shiny new algorithm is better than the one you already have? How do you settle an argument between you and your colleague? Order notation will help you choose between algorithms and settle arguments.
Order notation, otherwise known as Big &#8220;O&#8221; Notation, is one way of looking at the limiting behaviour [...]


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		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Seven ways to test your number-crunching code</title>
		<link>http://www.programming4scientists.com/2008/12/seven-ways-to-test-your-number-crunching-code/</link>
		<comments>http://www.programming4scientists.com/2008/12/seven-ways-to-test-your-number-crunching-code/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 22 Dec 2008 12:45:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Rich</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[testing/debugging]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[programming]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[science]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.programming4scientists.com/?p=376</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[
Testing your code is important.  Pretty much vital, in fact.  This is because if you don&#8217;t test your code, you don&#8217;t know if it really works.  So an integral part of any software project is to come up with a good set of tests for your code.
Scientific code often involves numerical analysis of some kind.  [...]


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		</item>
		<item>
		<title>The basics of &#8230; C\C++</title>
		<link>http://www.programming4scientists.com/2008/12/the-basics-of-cc/</link>
		<comments>http://www.programming4scientists.com/2008/12/the-basics-of-cc/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 16 Dec 2008 06:07:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Ben</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[The basics of...]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[C++]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[languages]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[Object-oriented programming]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[programming]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.programming4scientists.com/?p=368</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[



Image via Wikipedia



C and increasingly its Object Oriented younger brother, C++, are the go-to languages if you need complete control over your computer and the ability to transfer your code to just about any other platform. They are also the languages that are most likely to trip you up and generally make your life a [...]


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		</item>
		<item>
		<title>The basics of&#8230;R</title>
		<link>http://www.programming4scientists.com/2008/12/the-basics-ofr/</link>
		<comments>http://www.programming4scientists.com/2008/12/the-basics-ofr/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 08 Dec 2008 11:00:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Rich</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[Choosing a programming language]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[The basics of...]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[programming]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[programming languages]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[R programming language]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[science]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.programming4scientists.com/?p=364</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[
R is a free programming language designed to be good at statistics and graphics.  It&#8217;s downloadable for free and has lots of built-in functionality for maths, statistics and graphics operation.  It also has an active community that develops new add-on packages (libraries) and can be a good option to ask for help, if you&#8217;re really [...]


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		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Book review of &#8230; Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering</title>
		<link>http://www.programming4scientists.com/2008/12/book-review-of-facts-and-fallacies-of-software-engineering/</link>
		<comments>http://www.programming4scientists.com/2008/12/book-review-of-facts-and-fallacies-of-software-engineering/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 01 Dec 2008 13:49:01 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Ben</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[Book review]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[More advanced topics]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[The basics of...]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[book]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[Computer programming]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[Engineering]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[programming]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.programming4scientists.com/?p=354</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[&#8216;Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering &#8216;, by Robert L. Glass.
Robert Glass is a man who knows a lot about software engineering, he has written over a dozen books and writes regular columns in programming and computing publications that work towards his, self-confessed, goal of trying to bridge the academic and professional sides of software [...]


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		</item>
		<item>
		<title>&#8220;Almost the square root of 2&#8243; - rounding errors in computer code</title>
		<link>http://www.programming4scientists.com/2008/11/almost-the-square-root-of-2-rounding-errors-in-computer-code/</link>
		<comments>http://www.programming4scientists.com/2008/11/almost-the-square-root-of-2-rounding-errors-in-computer-code/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 24 Nov 2008 14:34:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Rich</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[Craft of coding]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[More advanced topics]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[programming]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[rounding errors]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[science]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.programming4scientists.com/?p=349</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[
Computers are great for handling numbers and doing large amounts of operations on them.  They can repeat the same operation over and over again and they will do the same thing every time (unlike a human, who will sometimes do the wrong thing by mistake).  This is great, but that doesn&#8217;t mean that computed operations [...]


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		</item>
		<item>
		<title>The basics of&#8230;Matlab</title>
		<link>http://www.programming4scientists.com/2008/11/the-basics-ofmatlab/</link>
		<comments>http://www.programming4scientists.com/2008/11/the-basics-ofmatlab/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 17 Nov 2008 21:58:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Rich</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[Choosing a programming language]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[The basics of...]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[tools]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[basics]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[matlab]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[programming]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[programming languages]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[science]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.programming4scientists.com/?p=342</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[
It&#8217;s important to know the basic features of any language you&#8217;re programming in.  We don&#8217;t just mean the syntax or whether the language is dynamically or statically typed (although these are very important); you also need to know what the language is good for, what it&#8217;s not so good for (and why), and any particular [...]


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		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Surviving legacy code</title>
		<link>http://www.programming4scientists.com/2008/11/surviving-legacy-code/</link>
		<comments>http://www.programming4scientists.com/2008/11/surviving-legacy-code/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 10 Nov 2008 16:38:22 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Ben</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[Craft of coding]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[legacy code]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[programming]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[science]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.programming4scientists.com/?p=335</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[
During Rich&#8217;s PhD, he was presented with some code and told to use it as the basis for a project he was working on.  This generosity turned into a major headache for a number of reasons, not least because the (somewhat sparse) comments were written partly in English and partly in Portuguese (!).  Many people [...]


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		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Book review of &#8230; The Pragmatic Programmer</title>
		<link>http://www.programming4scientists.com/2008/11/book-review-of-the-pragmatic-programmer/</link>
		<comments>http://www.programming4scientists.com/2008/11/book-review-of-the-pragmatic-programmer/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 03 Nov 2008 16:23:52 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Ben</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[Book review]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[book]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[review]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[The Pragmatic Programmer]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.programming4scientists.com/?p=329</guid>
		<description><![CDATA['The Pragmatic Programmer' shows you what you should be doing to become a great programmer. Its advice it not theoretical, it is grounded in the practical, and acknowledges that the reason people write software is to solve problems.


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		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Code that&#8217;s good enough&#8230;</title>
		<link>http://www.programming4scientists.com/2008/10/code-thats-good-enough/</link>
		<comments>http://www.programming4scientists.com/2008/10/code-thats-good-enough/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 28 Oct 2008 09:58:49 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Rich</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[Craft of coding]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[programming]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[science]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.programming4scientists.com/?p=322</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[
Let&#8217;s face it, there can be a huge temptation to keep polishing and honing your code almost indefinitely, to get it &#8220;Just Right&#8221;.  This is good because it shows you care about making your code work really well; caring and taking pride in one&#8217;s work leads to producing really great code.  However, there is such [...]


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