The distinction between “self” and “cls” is defined in PEP 8 . As Adrien said, this is not mandatory. It’s a coding style. PEP 8 says: Function and method arguments: Always use self for the first argument to instance methods. Always use cls for the first argument to class methods.
I learned that depth and height are properties of a node: The depth of a node is the number of edges from the node to the tree’s root node.A root node will have a depth of 0. The height of a node is the number of edges on the longest path from the node to … Read more
I am going to try to keep this dead simple. A “callback” is any function that is called by another function which takes the first function as a parameter. A lot of the time, a “callback” is a function that is called when something happens. That something can be called an “event” in programmer-speak. Imagine … Read more
In computer science terms, a Task is a future or a promise. (Some people use those two terms synonymously, some use them differently, nobody can agree on a precise definition.) Basically, a Task<T> “promises” to return you a T, but not right now honey, I’m kinda busy, why don’t you come back later? A Thread … Read more
A shim is any piece of code that performs interception of an API call and provides a layer of abstraction. It isn’t necessarily restricted to a web application or HTML5/CSS3. A polyfill is a type of shim that retrofits legacy browsers with modern HTML5/CSS3 features usually using Javascript or Flash. Answering your specific question, call … Read more
In the neural network terminology: one epoch = one forward pass and one backward pass of all the training examples batch size = the number of training examples in one forward/backward pass. The higher the batch size, the more memory space you’ll need. number of iterations = number of passes, each pass using [batch size] … Read more
It’s pretty intuitive: A program is CPU bound if it would go faster if the CPU were faster, i.e. it spends the majority of its time simply using the CPU (doing calculations). A program that computes new digits of π will typically be CPU-bound, it’s just crunching numbers. A program is I/O bound if it … Read more
At the time of writing this, the top voted answers on this page are imprecise and muddled on the declarative vs. imperative definition, including the answer that quotes Wikipedia. Some answers are conflating the terms in different ways. Refer also to my explanation of why spreadsheet programming is declarative, regardless that the formulas mutate the … Read more
Currying is converting a single function of n arguments into n functions with a single argument each. Given the following function: function f(x,y,z) { z(x(y));} When curried, becomes: function f(x) { lambda(y) { lambda(z) { z(x(y)); } } } In order to get the full application of f(x,y,z), you need to do this: f(x)(y)(z); Many … Read more
“boilerplate code” is any seemingly repetitive code that shows up again and again in order to get some result that seems like it ought to be much simpler. It’s a subjective definition. The term comes from “boilerplate” in the newspaper industry: wiki