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A Dart function to return a random element from a list

By Alvin Alexander. Last updated: October 29 2019

If you need to get a random element from a list in Dart, I can confirm this this getRandomListElement method works:

An example of a Flutter RadioListTile in a ListView

By Alvin Alexander. Last updated: September 16 2019

Here’s a little example of a Flutter time preferences widget, something I’ll be using in the new version of my Just Be app. Probably most important thing about this source code is that it shows an example of how to use the Flutter RadioListTile:

How to drop the first matching element in a Scala sequence

By Alvin Alexander. Last updated: August 21 2019

Summary: This blog post shows one way to drop/filter the first matching element from a Scala sequence (Seq, List, Vector, Array, etc.). I don’t claim that the algorithm is efficient, but it does work.

Background

While creating some Scala test code earlier today I had an immutable list of toppings for a pizza, and I got into a situation where I wanted to remove the first instance of a topping.

A “Minority Report” Monte Carlo simulation in Scala

By Alvin Alexander. Last updated: August 13 2019

This article shares the source code for a Monte Carlo simulation that I wrote in Scala. It was inspired by the movie Minority Report, as well as my own experience.

Background

For the purposes of this simulation, imagine that you have three people that are each “right” roughly 80% of the time. For instance, if they take a test with 100 questions, each of the three individuals will get 80 of the questions right, although they may not get the same questions right or wrong. Given these three people, my question to several statisticians was, “If two of the people have the same answer to a given question, what are the odds that they are correct? Furthermore, if all three of them give the same answer to a question, what are the odds that they are right?”

A Scala method to write a list of strings to a file

By Alvin Alexander. Last updated: July 6 2019

As a brief note today, here’s a Scala method that writes the strings in a list — more accurately, a Seq[String] — to a file:

def writeFile(filename: String, lines: Seq[String]): Unit = {
    val file = new File(filename)
    val bw = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter(file))
    for (line <- lines) {
        bw.write(line)
    }
    bw.close()
}

Java: A Java list `tail` function (for ArrayList, LinkedList, etc.)

By Alvin Alexander. Last updated: July 14 2019

As a brief note today, I was working on a Java/Android application recently, and I needed a “tail” function when I was working on a Java list. What I mean by that is that Scala has a tail function that returns all elements of the list except for the head element, like this:

scala> val x = List(1,2,3,4)
x: List[Int] = List(1, 2, 3, 4)

scala> x.tail
res1: List[Int] = List(2, 3, 4)  //head element removed

and I wanted the same thing in Java.

Java: Examples of the Java list/array `subList` method (list subset)

By Alvin Alexander. Last updated: June 27 2019

As a little note today, if you ever need to extract a subset of a Java list or array, here are some examples of the Java subList method:

A large list of people’s given names, sorted for Java/Kotlin/Scala testing

By Alvin Alexander. Last updated: March 9 2019

If for some reason you ever need a list of people’s given names for testing your Java/Scala/Kotlin/JVM code, here’s a Java class with a sorted, static list of over 5,000 male and female given (first) names:

How to create an RxJava 2 Observable from a Java List

By Alvin Alexander. Last updated: March 3 2019

As a brief note, here’s an example that shows how to create an RxJava 2 Observable from a Java List:

Scala: Generating a sequence/list of all ASCII printable characters

By Alvin Alexander. Last updated: February 7 2019

I ran into a couple of interesting things today when trying to generate random alphanumeric strings in Scala, which can be summarized like this. I won’t get into the “random” stuff I was working on, but here are a couple of examples of how to generate lists of alphanumeric/ASCII characters in Scala:

scala> val chars = ('a' to 'Z').toList
chars: List[Char] = List()

scala> val chars = ('A' to 'z').toList
chars: List[Char] = 
List(A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, 
     M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, 
     Y, Z, [, \, ], ^, _, `, a, b, c, d, 
     e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, 
     q, r, s, t, u, v, w, x, y, z)

scala> val chars = (' ' to 'z').toList
chars: List[Char] = 
List( , !, ", #, $, %, &, ', (, ), *, +, 
     ,, -, ., /, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 
     8, 9, :, ;, <, =, >, ?, @, A, B, C, 
     D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, 
     P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z, [, 
     \, ], ^, _, `, a, b, c, d, e, f, g, 
     h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, q, r, s, 
     t, u, v, w, x, y, z)

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