Stephan Boyer Computer science, software engineering, math, and music. http://www.stephanboyer.com/ 2013-05-14T18:37:12+00:00 Never Seek to Tell Thy Love http://www.stephanboyer.com/post/47/never-seek-to-tell-thy-love 2013-05-16T01:38:39+00:00 I wrote a ballad for tenor voice and piano featuring lyrics from William Blake's poem "Never Seek to Tell Thy Love." From a music theoretic perspective,... Stephan Boyer boyers@mit.edu I Wrote Some "Classical" Music http://www.stephanboyer.com/post/42/i-wrote-some-classical-music 2013-05-13T01:47:34+00:00 I'm taking a music theory/composition class at MIT called Writing in Tonal Forms. One of our class projects was to write a minuet and trio for string... Stephan Boyer boyers@mit.edu Fluid and Responsive Grid Layouts http://www.stephanboyer.com/post/41/fluid-and-responsive-grid-layouts 2013-05-09T12:00:00+00:00 Fluid and responsive layouts are becoming more commonplace in modern web designs. It's important that web applications are usable on all kinds of... Stephan Boyer boyers@mit.edu Covariance and Contravariance http://www.stephanboyer.com/post/39/covariance-and-contravariance 2013-05-06T12:00:00+00:00 Subtyping can be a complicated topic, and it's a nightmare for the programming language designer. This is due in part to confusion about a pair of... Stephan Boyer boyers@mit.edu Counting to a Billion http://www.stephanboyer.com/post/38/counting-to-a-billion 2013-05-05T12:00:00+00:00 I sometimes use Python for quick-and-dirty computations. Its "batteries-included" standard library makes it convenient for all kinds of tasks. Python... Stephan Boyer boyers@mit.edu The MIT Centrifugues Fall Concert 2013 http://www.stephanboyer.com/post/36/the-mit-centrifugues-fall-concert-2013 2013-04-29T12:00:00+00:00 In my last post, I announced that I had started a new bastard pop _a cappella_ group at MIT called the Centrifugues. Last night we had our first annual... Stephan Boyer boyers@mit.edu The Debut of the MIT Centrifugues http://www.stephanboyer.com/post/33/the-debut-of-the-mit-centrifugues 2013-04-15T12:00:00+00:00 For my last semester as an MIT undergraduate, I started a new bastard pop _a cappella_ group at MIT called the Centrifugues. After a semester of hard... Stephan Boyer boyers@mit.edu Piano Dueling with Sumin http://www.stephanboyer.com/post/32/piano-dueling-with-sumin 2013-04-14T12:00:00+00:00 Sumin and I had a "call and response" piano improv battle today. Stephan Boyer boyers@mit.edu Real-time Ray Tracing in JavaScript http://www.stephanboyer.com/post/30/real-time-ray-tracing-in-javascript 2013-03-30T12:00:00+00:00 A ray tracer^1 is a program that renders a 3-D scene by firing virtual rays from the camera and computing their intersections with the objects in the... Stephan Boyer boyers@mit.edu This Blog is Open Source! http://www.stephanboyer.com/post/29/this-blog-is-open-source 2013-03-25T12:00:00+00:00 The software that powers this blog is available on GitHub under the permissive MIT license. Of course, you are welcome to use it to serve your own... Stephan Boyer boyers@mit.edu Ave Verum Corpus http://www.stephanboyer.com/post/28/ave-verum-corpus 2013-03-25T12:00:00+00:00 Singing some Mozart with Sumin over spring vacation! Stephan Boyer boyers@mit.edu 3-Way Text Merging Algorithm http://www.stephanboyer.com/post/26/3-way-text-merging-algorithm 2013-02-06T12:00:00+00:00 For a class called 6.033 (Computer Systems Engineering) at MIT, I was required to design a collaborative, distributed text editor. It's supposed to work... Stephan Boyer boyers@mit.edu My Spring 2013 Schedule http://www.stephanboyer.com/post/25/my-spring-2013-schedule 2013-02-04T12:00:00+00:00 This is my final undergraduate semester at MIT. Here's my schedule this term! 1. 6.UAR Super UROP Academic Component 2. Advanced Undergraduate... Stephan Boyer boyers@mit.edu Highest Note on a Guitar http://www.stephanboyer.com/post/24/highest-note-on-a-guitar 2012-12-29T12:00:00+00:00 I just bought a new guitar, and I asked myself: **what is the highest note you can play on a guitar (in standard tuning?** When plucked, the high E... Stephan Boyer boyers@mit.edu Unicode Library http://www.stephanboyer.com/post/23/unicode-library 2012-10-30T12:00:00+00:00 I wrote a lightweight, low-level ASCII/Unicode processing library in C++ out of dissatisfaction with existing solutions. Get it here! Stephan Boyer boyers@mit.edu Deterministic and Nondeterministic Finite Automata http://www.stephanboyer.com/post/22/deterministic-and-nondeterministic-finite-automata 2012-10-28T12:00:00+00:00 Anyone who has taken a class on computability theory, compilers, or finite automata knows that regular expressions can be parsed in linear time by... Stephan Boyer boyers@mit.edu My Fall 2012 Schedule http://www.stephanboyer.com/post/20/my-fall-2012-schedule 2012-09-06T12:00:00+00:00 I'm a senior at MIT. Here's my schedule this term! 1. 6.UAR Super UROP Academic Component 2. Advanced Undergraduate Research Program 3. 6.170... Stephan Boyer boyers@mit.edu Algebraic Data Types http://www.stephanboyer.com/post/18/algebraic-data-types 2012-08-21T12:00:00+00:00 A type system starts with some primitive types. Some examples include: - `Int` (the type of integers, perhaps limited to some range) - `Real` (the... Stephan Boyer boyers@mit.edu My Electric Unicycle http://www.stephanboyer.com/post/17/my-electric-unicycle 2012-08-21T12:00:00+00:00 I recently built a partially self-balancing electric unicycle called "Bullet," featuring: - A custom MIG-welded steel chassis - A 450 Watt electric... Stephan Boyer boyers@mit.edu Monads, Part 2: A Data Structure for Computation http://www.stephanboyer.com/post/10/monads-part-2-a-data-structure-for-computation 2012-07-09T12:00:00+00:00 In the last post, we learned about monads and how to use them to implement exception handling, vector operations, and debug output. To refresh your... Stephan Boyer boyers@mit.edu Monads, Part 1: A Design Pattern http://www.stephanboyer.com/post/9/monads-part-1-a-design-pattern 2012-07-09T12:00:00+00:00 In the last two posts, we saw how we can describe side effects in a pure functional programming language with a combination of universe tokens (passing... Stephan Boyer boyers@mit.edu Uniqueness Types http://www.stephanboyer.com/post/8/uniqueness-types 2012-07-09T12:00:00+00:00 Last time we saw how we can, in practice, achieve side effects in a functional programming language without sacrificing purity. It seems like a paradox... Stephan Boyer boyers@mit.edu Side Effects and Functional Programming http://www.stephanboyer.com/post/7/side-effects-and-functional-programming 2012-07-09T12:00:00+00:00 Today we'll examine why functional languages have a reputation of being a mere novelty of academia, while imperative languages have dominated the... Stephan Boyer boyers@mit.edu The Great War http://www.stephanboyer.com/post/6/the-great-war 2012-07-09T12:00:00+00:00 I'd like to make the content of this blog as accessible as possible to the general computer science community. To start off, I think it would be a good... Stephan Boyer boyers@mit.edu Welcome http://www.stephanboyer.com/post/5/welcome 2012-07-09T12:00:00+00:00 I recently became obsessed with declarative programming, and functional programming in particular. Languages such as Haskell, Erlang, Miranda, and... Stephan Boyer boyers@mit.edu