Dan S. Myers

Sandy Boys (Edden Hammons and Tim Eriksen)

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Algorithms 201: Floyd-Warshall Shortest paths with dynamic programming

Continuing a series of notes on dynamic programming with one of the canonical graph algorithms.

New Method Is the Fastest Way To Find the Best Routes | Quanta Magazine A canonical problem in computer science is to find the shortest route to every point in a network. A new approach beats the classic algorithm taught in textbooks.

My latest in @quantamagazine.bsky.social: a new algorithm solves the classic single-source shortest paths problem faster than ever before — by finding paths out of order:

Elzic's Farewell - electric flatpicking.

Algorithms 201: Levenshtein Edit Distance Using dynamic programming to compare strings

New post walking through the edit distance algorithm.

YouTube video by Chip's World Spongebob Sings Black Sabbath

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Supermarket Sweep: An Introduction to Dynamic Programming This note is an introduction to the important algorithmic concept of dynamic programming, written the way I’d present it in one of my classes.

New post presenting dynamic programming. This is an important but tricky algorithms concept and I wanted a better overview to share with my students.

Nobody could focus on their own moves Sometimes You Really Should Read the Comments: A Fine Little Reminiscence Posted to a YouTube Upload of Black Sabbath's Supernaut

www.metafilter.com/156423/Nobod...

YouTube video by Black Sabbath - Topic Supernaut (2020 Remaster)

"To this day I am blown away by her moves in total deadly harmony with this music."

In honor of Ozzy, remembering the now lost YouTube comment about how a girl ruined a martial arts tournament in 1979 with Supernaut.

Chatbots in the classroom: how AI is reshaping higher education While institutions grapple with the pace of change, technology companies are moving quickly to offer custom learning products

I have a quote in this piece by Cristina Criddle in the Financial Times describing one of my AI assignments in our intro to programming class.

Amazing Grace.

Dario Amodei — Machines of Loving Grace How AI Could Transform the World for the Better

By the CEO of Anthropic.

www.darioamodei.com/essay/machin...

Spanish Fandango.

One of the classic old-time parlor guitar pieces in open-G tuning. Frequently printed in early guitar books as a showpiece, then passed into the folk guitar repertoire.

In the Zone Friction vs. lubrication in the learning process

New post on some ideas raised at the recent AI@SLAC conference. AI can reduce friction in assignments, but when is that good, and when does it risk making things too easy?

Come for the Zone of Proximal Development, stay for the (ridiculous) concept of "lubricating the curriculum".

How Should Students Learn to Code Nowadays? Some thoughts from the trenches

Stepping into the Substack world with a longer post on teaching and learning programming in the present era.

With the Imperial Boy city picture.

If you want to buy new slide rules you can get them from Japanese brand Concise. I bought these for my Ancient Algorithms class last year.

www.sliderule.tokyo/products/det...

Soviet KL-1 circular watch-sized logarithmic calculator, ca. 1970. 40th-birthday gift from my wife.

The stylized logo is "MLTZKP" in Cyrillic, which is the acronym of the Moscow Experimental Plant for Control Devices

Vintage demonstration slide rule I stole from the Physics department supply room.

I've become more radical over the last year.

I think you now have to assume that all out-of-class work might involve some use of AI, then think about how to redesign your course under that reality.

Some ideas in this thread about my Intro to CS class:

bsky.app/profile/dans...

We often try to fit LLMs into our pre-existing boxes of either "content generator" or "search engine". They're okay but not great at those things.

"Take an sample from the collective intelligence", on-demand and on any topic, is a new capability.

Critics are right that AI often lacks the spark that we want from individual creators.

It's hard to get a unique point-of-view unless you aggressively prompt it into one, in which case it's bootstrapping off your preferences.

I like this quote from composer Holly Herndon (via Ezra Klein's podcast):

3. Remove friction.

If something becomes easier, we should expect to do more of it. What does that enable?

Programming can now be far more accessible across the curriculum. That should have impacts across pretty much every discipline.