It’s one of the oldest control structures, dating back to early programming languages like FORTRAN and Assembly. But despite its historical significance, the goto keyword has developed a controversial reputation over the years. In fact, it’s often associated with spaghetti code — a tangled mess of jumps in logic that’s nearly impossible to maintain. So […]

Evolutionary algorithms (EAs) offer a compelling approach to problem-solving by drawing inspiration from the principles of natural selection, which have been uncovered by biologists. In this blog post, we will explore how EAs work and consider some of their real-world applications, before going on to work on an example implementation in the Go programming language. […]

The steganographic strategies we saw that prisoners could use to hide their communications in the previous post I wrote made me think about the somewhat related yet broader subject of game theory. This field has its own very famous Prisoners’ Dilemma, as we shall see later. This introduction to game theory is designed for a […]

Imagine sending a secret message that’s hidden in plain sight — embedded within an innocent-looking text file. No encryption and no suspicious attachments, just pure Unicode trickery. It sounds like something out of a spy novel, doesn’t? Well, with a little bit of thought and some clever encoding, we can use Unicode characters to conceal […]

The P vs NP problem is a major unresolved issue in theoretical computer science. It challenges our fundamental understanding of computation, efficiency and the nature of problem-solving itself. This question doesn’t just examine what computers can do today. It probes the limits of what machines can achieve, and what they may never be able to […]

Sometimes “blockchain” can seem like nothing more than a hyped-up buzzword. Yet, despite the hype, it’s useful to understand the fundamental concept that lies behind it, which isn’t very difficult to grasp. It’s really quite simple and elegant. The blockchain data structure is particularly important because it’s at the heart of valuable decentralized systems like […]

The famous Gopher, which is now used as a universal symbol of the Go programming language, was designed by Renée French. The Birth of the Gopher The Gopher was first introduced in 2010 as part of a design effort to give the Go programming language a recognizable and relatable mascot. The language’s creators wanted a […]

This is the first in an upcoming series of interviews with professional software developers who use Go in their work and amateur coders who use it in their personal projects. This first interview is with Jon Rafkind, who is a senior software engineer with around 8 years of experience using Go. He has an undergraduate […]