- Hello and welcome to Code Clinic.
My name is Dan Gookin.
Code Clinic is a course where unique problem
is introduced to a collection of lynda.com authors.
In response each author creates a solution
by using their programming language of choice.
You could learn several things from Code Clinic,
different approaches to solving a problem,
the pros and cons of different languages
and some tips and tricks to incorporate
into your own coding practices.
This chapter's puzzle is a classic computer programming
problem called The Eight Queens.
This famous problem is often used during interviews
or to demonstrate the utility of a programming language.
It requires an understanding of recursion
and algorithm design
and can be quite useful as an exercise
in learning to program solutions for complex solutions.
This problem was proposed by Max Bezzel in 1848
and solved by Franz Nauck in 1850.
The problem is simple.
Start with a chessboard and eight queens.
Then set up the board so that no two queens
can attack each other.
More than one solution is possible,
in fact 92 possible solutions are possible.
Examples of the solution are available in several
computer languages.
If you've never played chess, you'll need to understand
that a queen can attack by moving an unlimited
number of spaces in three directions,
horizontally, vertically, and diagonally.
This means that no two queens can share a row or column
nor can they be located diagonally from each other.
In the following movies I'll show you my solution
to The Eight Queens problem.
I'd encourage you to also look at the solutions
from other authors in the lynda.com library.
You'll be able to compare different author styles
and different languages.