hash = Hash.new(0); str.split.each { |m| hash[m] += 1}

Well thats all fine and dandy… A plain old Ruby one-liner. My friend Stef, however, suggested this close alternative:

hash = Hash.new(0); str.scan(/\w+/m) { |m| hash[m] += 1}

Whats different? Well Stef’s code uses a regex scan of a “m”ultiline string, then adds 1 to each match in the hash. His regex takes series of 1 or more “\w”ord characters to be a match. Whereas my code uses Ruby’s built-in “split” method to split on whitespace, then iterate over the resultant array.

This is how split works:

str = "My name is Ryan."
str.split #=> ["My","name","is","Ryan."]

For simple strings, like “My name is Ryan.”, Stef’s regex scan works almost identically. For this example we will ignore the fact that “\w” won’t match things like ‘-’, its not really that important at the moment.

As any good Computer Scientists our divergence of methods lead to a great argument… Which one was better? From my point of view, “split.each” is much more readable, clearly (without a regex) splits on whitespace, and is nearly as terse as the regex equivalent. From Stef’s point of view he A) didn’t have to use “each” and B) had more control over the split. We agreed to disagree, clearly each works best in different situations. Split is best for a simple split, but Scan is far more versatile.

Having put semantics aside we began wrestling over which one would be faster. We threw together this “Benchmark” script:

require 'benchmark'

str = "1 2 3 4-5 6 7 8-9"
Benchmark.bm do |bm|
bm.report("split: ") {10000.times do hash = Hash.new(0); str.split.each { |m| hash[m] += 1}; end  }
bm.report("scan: (\\w+) ") { 10000.times do hash = Hash.new(0); str.scan(/\w+/m) { |m| hash[m] = 1} end  }
bm.report("scan: (\w+(-\w+)?) ") { 10000.times do hash = Hash.new(0); str.scan(/(\w+(-\w+)?)/m) { |m| hash[m] += 1} end  }
end

Here’s the result of those benchmarks on various Ruby versions:

## Native environment tests - 1.8.7
#Creating one hash and clear it: (hash.clear instead of hash = Hash.new(0))
#                     user     system      total        real
# split:            0.490000   0.150000   0.640000 (  0.656165)
# scan: (\w+)       0.800000   0.180000   0.980000 (  1.003529)
# scan: (w+(-w+)?)  1.390000   0.340000   1.730000 (  1.745792)

#Creating a new hash every time:
#                     user     system      total        real
# split:            0.470000   0.140000   0.610000 (  0.643760)
# scan: (\w+)       0.800000   0.180000   0.980000 (  0.989383)
# scan: (w+(-w+)?)  1.170000   0.260000   1.430000 (  1.457280)

## Variety tests by Stef Penner
#mbp:rubinius stefan$ ruby -v
# -> ruby 1.8.7 (2008-06-20 patchlevel 22) [i686-darwin9.3.0]
#mbp:rubinius stefan$ macruby -v
# -> MacRuby version 0.3 (ruby 1.9.0 2008-06-03) [universal-darwin9.0]
#mbp:rubinius stefan$ jruby -v
# -> ruby 1.8.6 (2008-06-22 rev 6555) [i386-jruby1.1.1]
#mbp:rubinius stefan$ rbx -v
# -> rubinius 0.9.0 (ruby 1.8.6 compatible) (8038487c4) (10/19/2008) [i686-apple-darwin9.5.0]

## Variety tests by Stef Penner
# $ rubinous regx.rb
#                   user     system      total        real
# split:           1.422384   0.000000   1.422384 (  1.422366)
# scan: (\w+)      1.458300   0.000000   1.458300 (  1.458299)
# scan: (w+(-w+)?) 2.127930   0.000000   2.127930 (  2.127929)

# $ ruby regx.rb
#                   user     system      total        real
# split:           0.410000   0.140000   0.550000 (  0.559599)
# scan: (\w+)      0.670000   0.180000   0.850000 (  0.862585)
# scan: (w+(-w+)?) 0.990000   0.270000   1.260000 (  1.268065)

# $ ruby1.9 regx.rb
#                   user     system      total        real
# split:           0.090000   0.000000   0.090000 (  0.096752)
# scan: (\w+)      0.170000   0.000000   0.170000 (  0.164321)
# scan: (w+(-w+)?) 0.280000   0.000000   0.280000 (  0.291374)
# $ macruby regx.rb
#                   user     system      total        real
# split:           0.440000   0.030000   0.470000 (  0.490660)
# scan: (\w+)      4.310000   0.050000   4.360000 (  4.449849)
# scan: (w+(-w+)?) 4.380000   0.040000   4.420000 (  4.503897)

# $ jruby regx.rb
#                   user     system      total        real
# split:           0.456000   0.000000   0.456000 (  0.456000)
# scan: (\w+)      0.261000   0.000000   0.261000 (  0.260000)
# scan: (w+(-w+)?) 0.369000   0.000000   0.369000 (  0.369000)

# $jruby 1.1.3 regx.rb
#                   user     system      total        real
# split:           0.235000   0.000000   0.235000 ( 0.234993)
# scan: (\w+)      0.228000   0.000000   0.228000 ( 0.228318)
# scan: (w+(-w+)?) 0.329000   0.000000   0.329000 ( 0.328884)

Its rather interesting to see how each version of ruby compares, yes Rubinius is slower, but WOW, Ruby 1.9.1 takes only 16% the time 1.8.7 takes!

As for me, I’ve come upon a new stage of my “developership” – I’ve been learning Ruby, Rails, CSS, HTML, and a bit of Javascript. (in addition to all the languages I’ve been learning in school: FP, C, Lisp and Prolog at present). As much as I didn’t expect I’ve been exhilarated by web development these last few weeks. I’ve been spending more and more time with my two good friends Burke and Stef over at Chromium 53; both of whom attend the University of Manitoba with me. They’ve been doing big things, and it has gotten me excited. I’m currently playing catch up with Ruby and Rails in hopes of working with those two fine gentlemen (and the way things are going they will need a few helping hands ).

Stay tuned as I may start posting little snips and pieces of code I write or find interesting.

Today I wrapped up some errands at the university before I head back to school on thursday. All I can say is I am very much sick and tired of being nickeled and dimed by univesities and the like treating their students like invalids; I’m a big **ing boy now, I should be able to use a credit card to pay for things, declare majors, not pay almost $120 for each book I purchase, and finally, I should be treated as if I were responsible for my own decisions. AND SCENE… (I’ll cut myself short here, it will get pretty incoherent if I continue)

As for classes I am taking this term; I’ll be taking:

• Discrete Mathematics for Computer Science
• Introduction to Scientific Computing
• Introduction to Artificial Intelligence
• Programming Practices (a course in C taught by my favorite professor M. Zapp)
• Programming Language Concepts

I’m not sure how the load of the term will be, but if it isn’t that much (hopefully my GSoC experience has trained me well) I hope to spend some more time developing myself a decent game engine to start making games on, or perhaps learn Ruby or Python, as well as trying to make a dime or two on RentACoder. It is getting late though, I should be off to bed

This whole experience has been a real eye opener for me. I’ve become a lot more confident about my current skill as a programmer, and have also come to see more of the “big picture” and where I fit in. While I am still no where near being an expert I think I will now be able to recognize when I get there :P. I’m very excited to see the effect all this learning has had on me when I return to school this fall; Hopefully I won’t be butting my head with professors and the like too often, but it is now very clear to me how much my Computer Science training will/has failed me and my fellow students. If only everyone could have to opportunity to work with GSoC and extend themselves as I have. If I were to just complete my degree without GSoC or personal projects I am sure I would be an atrocious programmer.

As time permits I will continue to work on Thousand Parsec and Risk, but I cannot guarantee the same level of commitment as I have put in this summer. My first orders of business will be increased stability (mainly via upcoming AI’s and their development), improved audio and video (so like everything) for the screencasts, particularly “basic”, and in general just being available to help with the ruleset and improve upon it.

As far as I can see (and hope) this summer has been a success and if finances aren’t a problem I would hope to participate again next summer. If anyone has any issues with Risk don’t hesitate to email me, as I will never ignore a TP related email.

I won’t launch into a large speech about my time with GSoC and the Thousand Parsec project yet, as things aren’t QUITE done yet. I won’t be back until the ~12-13 so as far as things have gone I will be in the “code wrap-up stage.” Things are generally pretty good, and in the remaining time I will tidy up my code and polish off bonus reinforcements. It is almost too bad that screencasts took to long (I barely finished today), as there are many other “small” features I would have liked to integrate (such as BattleXML, inkscape-independant map imports, and other “Risk” features.)

I almost forgot to announce the most important thing: I wrapped up production of three Risk screencasts today. Its been a long time coming as far as “features” go. I probably spent 3-4 weeks just working mainly on screencasts and related setup (to actually record the screencasts.) In the long run if I were to produce a screencast again I would be wary to proceed without a quality microphone, screencasting software, video-editing software, and a hella-good script. Throw in visiting family and it was a real nightmare trying to get things done. You can find the screencasts on youtube (if you search real hard ) or via the TP Wiki Risk entry. Oh heck, I’ll just include them at the bottom.

Oh and an added note: iMovie ‘08 really sucks compared to the older versions.

Basic Gameplay:

Advanced Gameplay:

Map Making:

This week also saw the introduction of wormhole support (commit) which has vastly improved the playability of the ruleset. Other than that this week has been technically quite uneventful; I’ve learned very quickly how hard screencasting really is. Things still look and feel like they will be on time, but I can definitely say I won’t have as much time left over as I thought I would.

Other than that I am a little confused about how good the screencast needs to be. I don’t want to seem like a schmuk getting tongue-tied on film, but does the odd slip-up here and there ruin the entire paragraph? Please let me know what you think…

EDIT: OK, so the audio is pretty quiet, and it sounds like I’m blasting off to somewhere. I’ll probably rerecord the audio with better audio, unless I can clean it up.

As for work things have been delayed but not so much I am behind schedule. It was very exciting to learn that many of the AI ‘fellows’ would be working on a Risk AI; It has forced me to think more deeply about how Risk works from an outsiders perspective (and probably going to improve the quality of my screencasts.) I should be recording my screencast’s video this week, and dubbing this week or next. I also received some positive feedback from my mentor Tyler about my map import code; Surprisingly (since I still undervalue myself as a coder) I was not far from the mark. If I put in a concentrated effort it should only be 1-2 days to really clean up that code. I also received some feedback about comments in my code from Mithro: I’m not terribly far from the correct path, but I will be “doxygenating” my functions most likely in the “wrap-up” week that is the last week of GSoC.

Another exciting development from Mithro was the creation of a “Wormholes” patch. The patch updates my Risk code to properly draw lines between planets. This development has to be one of the biggest things to happen to Risk this summer. Map imports was big, and cool, but “Line drawing” is a huge usability feature that Risk was sorely missing. A big thanks to Mithro and anyone else who aided him (and by proxy, me) in getting Risk to display properly.

Contrary to last week I can actually link to some commits(first half of scripts, second half, map); There have been less and less (commits) now that I am winding down. In fact, my TODO list has dwindeled to a managle 4 items:

1. Clean up SVG map import
2. Implement awarding continent ownership bonus
3. Dub audio for JLPs screencast
4. Record + Dub my own screencasts

As for my plans for next week; I plan to get lots done. I’ll be recording my own screen casts as well as audio for JLP’s. I may also get around to ownership bonuses and cleaning up my SVG map imports Luckily for me family will be leaving Tuesday morning, and I should have a good full week to work! (something I must say I have been missing)