Today I committed initial version of my Diploma Work Sources.

And there are few interesting things regarding to my first commit.

Thing One (Language)

I re-wrote all my last year course work from Java to C#.
And I did it all in about 12 hours. Its just amazing how my developing speed differs in eclipse and Visual Studio IDEs. As I remember same took me 50+ hours with Java + eclipse and I did all without enthusiasm.

I hate writing properties in Java
This is one thing where I do think that Java is kind more verbose than C#. There are some others, like “var”, etc. Microsoft works on improving C# language.

C#

   public double[] Parameters {get; set;}
Java

    private double[] parameters;
    public double[] getParamateres(){
        return parameters;
    }
    public void setParamateres(){
        return parameters;
    }


How important is your knowledge of IDE?

I would say that even more then knowing of language. Nowadays most of  the languages are object-oriented, they all have similar principles and ideas and code looks almost the same. If we talk about C# and Java they are extremely alike.
I’m not very familiar with Java, but I can write Java code easily and if there are some Java specific gaps I quickly fulfill them with google search.
But when we talk about my speed of coding in eclipse IDE – it is really outstanding thing where my capabilities suck.

Code refactoring tool
That is another thing that could significantly increase your productivity. I’m using Resharper 5.0 Beta. Having experience of using it, I can think about what I want to have, but not how to type that.
Live templates that generates me unit test method after I just type “test”. Delivering from interface, I just created, without typing class name. Moving initialization of fields to the class constructor with single command. “Alt+Enter” just thing instead of me in contest of where mouse cursor is located and proposes me decisions.  — these all are things why I love Resharper. I wrote complex architecture with about 40 classes in about 12 hours. It generates what I think.

Thing Two (Architecture)


I improved my Self-Organizing Maps implementation architecture significantly. What is did is having all implemented in really decoupled interfaces. Main learning processor is just like preparing dinner. You just add component and you do have what you want.

        public LearningProcessorBase(
            ILearningData learningData,
            INetwork network,
            ITopology topology,
            IMetricFunction metricFunction,
            ILearningFactorFunction learningFactorFunction,
            INeighbourhoodFunction neighbourhoodFunction,
            int maxIterationsCount)
        {
            LearningData = learningData;
            Network = network;
            Topology = topology;
            MetricFunction = metricFunction;
            LearningFactorFunction = learningFactorFunction;
            NeighbourhoodFunction = neighbourhoodFunction;
            MaxIterationsCount = maxIterationsCount;
        }

What is the benefit?
Now I’m able easily setup few dependency Profiles and experiment with them. So I can play with different activation, neigbourhood, metric and leaning factor functions, at the same time I can use different topologies like matrix and hexagonal.
Also learning process is now really encapsulated and to add Concurrency implementation should be easily.

Thing Three (I have same results with less effort)

To prove that I have same results I’ve used same application of my Kohonen Maps: classification of animals.
Here is input data list of different animals. Each row describes animal’s properties.

Here is result matrix:

Thing Four (Conclusion)

I’m  really sorry that it is boring for me to have my Diploma written on Java. But I really think that my goal is to invent multi-threaded algorithm that could significantly improve SOM calculations. And I feel really comfortable with C#, so I can enjoy research work without spending time on convincing myself that I do need to accomplish all with Java.
But this doesn’t mean that I gave up with learning Java. No – I will continue implementing all GoF Design Patterns on this pretty language – see my table.