CS research

[arh]

Hi guys. I'm a highschool student taking computer science classes at dartmouth college. I was wondering if anyone had an research topics for me to look into. I know the general answer to this kind of thing is "whatever you like", but I really have no idea. Just some general topics would be really useful, or a place where I can find out what else is being done so that I can get some ideas.

X-mas vacation is coming up, and I'd love to find something to do (besides world of warcraft ;) )

thanks

[Ancient Dragon]

research project: name the most popular sort algorithms and briefly describe how they work. Which algorithms are the fastest. there is tons of information on this topic because Ph.D.'s have done a great deal of search about it.

[arh]

Thanks for the idea. Sounds kinda boring (since I'm not gonna find much of anything faster that nlgn :) ). I'll look into that. We did a shorter version of that on my final exam for my last CS class.

[Ancient Dragon]

you might do something in networking -- how to set up and administer a network for your school's computers.

Or how to set up a web site which would include database. That should take the next couple years to complete.

[Rashakil Fol]

That doesn't sound like research to me...

arh, how about you write a compiler? Make a compiler for the Scheme programming language. Write the compiler in Scheme, too. Think about what optimizations you can make. Especially when it comes to dealing with call-with-current-continuation.

Oh, and have the target language be the language Brainfuck. I don't know of anybody who's make a Scheme-to-Brainfuck compiler. :-) You will have to omit file operations from the language's standard library, only input/output, of course.

Make a version that reads the input Scheme code in stdin, and then writes the Brainfuck code to stdout. Then compile the compiler into Brainfuck code!

Brainfuck is spelled B R A I N * * * *, of course.

[Rashakil Fol]

Let's try another way of getting around the language filters and the people who have the disease that causes them to get offended at things.

So.

<< attempt to circumvent bad words filter >>

Now, this idea is a bit difficult. I don't know what Comp Sci you've been doing, but it's an interesting problem, since this target language is inherently less efficient than Scheme or C or C++ or Assembly language (or machine code). First, you need to understand the target language, Brainfuck. I suggest that you try to write some useful programs in the language before anything else. I hope you are not capable of doing the project without a second thought, because then there'd be no point to doing it. The real point of this will be to expose you to languages like Scheme, in case you haven't been, and more in-particularly, Brainfuck, the absurdity of which I think you might enjoy. This might be something you'd be more attuned to _after_ taking a theory of computation or programming languages class, but I don't care.

[jwenting]

One of the things you're supposed to learn is thinking for yourself.
That includes coming up with your own ideas...

[arh]

Thanks rashakil fol. That was the kind of thing I'm looking for. That seems like an interesting idea that will preoccupy me for a while. I think that my next CS class is using scheme (or a descendent of it).

[iamthwee]

What's the difference between Brain**** and Bool****.

[Rashakil Fol]

one uses bytes whereas the other uses bits