Okay, here’s my attempt at a blog post based on the title “joseph malta”, mimicking your requested style.
Alright, so I messed around with something called “joseph malta” today. Sounded cool, right? I honestly didn’t know what it was at first. Just saw the name floating around and thought, “Why not?”.
First thing I did, obviously, was Google it. Turns out, it’s related to some kind of circular linked list and figuring out who survives. Kinda morbid, but hey, I’m a programmer, I deal with dead processes all the time.
So, the basic idea is you have a circle of people, and every ‘k’th person gets eliminated until only one is left. This last person is the “survivor”. Josephus problem. Got it.
I decided to tackle this with Python. Seemed easy enough. I started by creating a list representing the people. Like this:
Created a list called `people` with numbers representing each person, starting from 1.
Then I had to figure out the elimination part. This is where it got a little tricky. I needed to keep track of the current position in the circle and make sure I wrapped around when I reached the end of the list. I ended up using the modulo operator (`%`) for that.
Here’s how I did the elimination:
Set a `current_position` to 0.
Entered a `while` loop that continues as long as the `people` list has more than one person.
Moved the `current_position` forward by `k-1` steps (because we start counting from the current person).
Used the modulo operator (`%`) to wrap around the list: `current_position = current_position % len(people)`.
Removed the person at the `current_position` from the list using `*(current_position)`.
After the loop finishes, the only person left in the `people` list is the survivor. Pretty straightforward, right?
But, of course, it wasn’t that straightforward. I had a few off-by-one errors at first. Kept eliminating the wrong people. Spent a good hour debugging that. Turns out, my modulo math was a little off. Had to adjust the starting position and the increment to get it right.
Once I got the basic algorithm working, I wanted to make it a bit more efficient. The list manipulation was kinda slow, especially for large numbers of people. I thought about using a linked list, but decided that was overkill for this little experiment.
Instead, I just optimized the modulo math and made sure I wasn’t doing any unnecessary list operations. Made a noticeable difference, especially when testing with like 1000 people.
Finally, I wrapped it all up in a nice little function that takes the number of people and the elimination interval (`k`) as input and returns the survivor. Added some error handling too, just in case someone tries to pass in negative numbers or something.
So, yeah, that was my afternoon with “joseph malta”. Learned a little bit about circular lists, modulo arithmetic, and the importance of careful debugging. Not bad for a random Tuesday, I guess.
If you wanna try it yourself, here’s some Python-like pseudocode (can’t give you the actual code, company rules, you know?):
function josephus(num_people, k):
people = list(range(1, num_people + 1))
current_position = 0
while len(people) > 1:
current_position = (current_position + k - 1) % len(people)
*(current_position)
return people[0]
Give it a shot. Let me know if you find a more efficient way to do it. I’m always up for learning something new. Later!
