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Computer Science Articles - Pg. 2

Examples of Heuristics in Computer Science
Nov 30, 2020 by Winston Wagner
Heuristics in computer science and artificial intelligence are “rules of thumb” used in algorithms to assist in finding approximate solutions to complex problems. Often, there’s simply too much data to sift through to come to a solution promptly, so a heuristic algorithm is used to trade exactness for speed. However, because heuristics are based on individual rules unique to the problem they are solving, the specifics of the heuristics vary from problem to problem.
Comprehensive Guide to Learn Computer Science Online
Nov 18, 2020 by Lane Wagner
Be careful about deciding the best way to learn to code. Not all paths are equally effective. Self-taught developers and bootcamp graduates often struggle a lot to find their first coding job. In my experience, it’s much easier to get your foot in the door when you spend the time learning the CS basics that so many “crash courses” skip over when trying to get students to dive directly into the deep end of application code.
Base64 vs Base58 Encoding
Nov 03, 2020 by Lane Wagner
Base64 is one of the most popular encoding formats for representing data. Have some binary data? Base64 encodes it for convenient readability and parsing. Base58 is just another encoding format (with 58 characters instead of 64, and has gained popularity largely due to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Also, if you came here confused, encryption and encoding are not the same! Take a look at this article for more information on encryption vs encoding.
Best Practices for Commenting Code
Oct 29, 2020 by Lane Wagner
I often hear that we need more and better comments in the code we write. In my experience, we frequently need better comments, we rarely need more, and we sometimes need less. Before you crucify me for my sacrilege, let me explain by giving you some of the “rules of thumb” I use for deciding when I should add a comment to my code.
What Is Entropy In Cryptography?
Sep 28, 2020 by Lane Wagner
If you’re familiar with the laws of thermodynamics, you may recognize the second law as the one that deals with entropy. In the realm of physics, entropy represents the degree of disorder in a system. Because systems tend to degrade over time, thermodynamic energy becomes less available to do mechanical work.
Guard Clauses - How to Clean up Conditionals
Sep 06, 2020 by Lane Wagner
One of the first concepts new developers learn is the if/else statement. If/else statements are the most common way to execute conditional logic. However, complex and nested if/else statements can quickly become a cognitive burden and compromise the readability of a program.
Slow Is Smooth, Smooth Is Fast - 25% of Our Time Refactoring
Sep 01, 2020 by Lane Wagner
My team has been spending less of our “free” time working on bugs and features from the backlog, and more time refactoring our code and tests. As a result, and perhaps somewhat counterintuitively, we’ve noticed a significant increase in our throughput of features and bug fixes.
(Very) Basic Intro to Lattices in Cryptography
Aug 21, 2020 by Lane Wagner
Lattice-based cryptography, an important contender in the race for quantum-safe encryption, describes constructions of cryptographic primitives that involve mathematical lattices. Lattices, as they relate to crypto, have been coming into the spotlight recently. In January 2019, Many of the semifinalists in the NIST post-quantum-cryptography competition were based on lattices. Lattice-based cryptography has promising aspects that give us hope for cryptographic security in a post-quantum world.
What is SHA-256?
Jul 08, 2020 by Lane Wagner
SHA-2 (Secure Hash Algorithm 2), of which SHA-256 is a part, is one of the most popular hash algorithms around. A cryptographic hash, also often referred to as a “digest”, “fingerprint” or “signature”, is an almost perfectly unique string of characters that is generated from a separate piece of input text. SHA-256 generates a 256-bit (32-byte) signature.
Why is Exclusive Or (XOR) Important in Cryptography?
Jan 18, 2020 by Lane Wagner
If you are getting into cryptography, or just trying to understand the fundamentals, you may have noticed that the exclusive or (XOR) operation is used quite often, especially in ciphers. XOR is a simple bitwise operation that allows cryptographers to create strong encryption systems, and consequently is a fundamental building block of practically all modern ciphers. Let’s dive into the details and see what makes XOR so important.
(Very) Basic Intro to Hash Functions (SHA-256, MD5, etc)
Jan 01, 2020 by Lane Wagner
Hash functions are used to securely store passwords, find duplicate records, quickly store and retrieve data, among other useful computational tasks. As a practical example, all user passwords on boot.dev are hashed using Bcrypt to ensure that if an attacker were ever to gain access to our database our user’s passwords wouldn’t be compromised.
Cryptology vs Cryptography - Definitions and Differences
Dec 16, 2019 by Lane Wagner
Many new developers are jumping right into writing code, usually for those fat paychecks, without learning much about the history of Computer Science. Alan Turing is recognized as the father of Computer Science, though many don’t know that his roots were in cryptology and mathematics. It was out of cryptology, cryptography, and mathematics that computer science was born.
Encoding vs Encryption - They Aren't the Same
Aug 14, 2019 by Lane Wagner
While encryption does involve various methods of encoding data, the two are absolutely not interchangeable. In fact, if you get them mixed up it can result in serious data breaches and security vulnerabilities.

Computer Science Articles - Pg. 2

Examples of Heuristics in Computer Science

Comprehensive Guide to Learn Computer Science Online

Base64 vs Base58 Encoding

Best Practices for Commenting Code

What Is Entropy In Cryptography?

Guard Clauses - How to Clean up Conditionals

Slow Is Smooth, Smooth Is Fast - 25% of Our Time Refactoring

(Very) Basic Intro to Lattices in Cryptography

What is SHA-256?

Why is Exclusive Or (XOR) Important in Cryptography?

(Very) Basic Intro to Hash Functions (SHA-256, MD5, etc)

Cryptology vs Cryptography - Definitions and Differences

Encoding vs Encryption - They Aren't the Same