5 Jan
2012
5 Jan
'12
1:05 p.m.
On Wed, Jan 04, 2012 at 07:53:43PM -0800, Fred Cisin wrote:
"No matter how large a machine you can find, I can find a set of data that
is too big to fit. With properly written algorithms, 64K is PLENTY.
Of course. The problem is that an apparently increasing number of programmers
test their code with the smallest possible dataset, notice that it works
and call it a day. When I tested graphical MUAs a few years ago, they would
all work fine with a few mailboxes with a few small mails, but most would
break horribly when dealing with mailboxes containing a few 10k emails.
Whereas mutt deals with those just fine (and speedily).
On Wed, 4 Jan 2012, allison wrote:
Not necessarily - you could just mill it out of a solid block of steel.
There is always at least one wrong way to do it ... ;-)
Never used Fortran.
Think of it as an old-style version of BASIC. WRITE is like PRINTUSING,
with FORMAT being where you specify the print pattern. Any variable whose
name starts with the letters I J K L M or N (alphabetic letters between I
and N (which is the start of "INteger")) is assumed to be an int, unless
you tell it otherwise. Many brands of it require giving a line number to
every line. CALL instead of GOSUB, . . . There are so few differences
that you can list them!
My first language was Darthmuth BASIC on GE
Tymeshare.
I've always assumed that Kurtz and Kemeny's intent was just to make
getting started in FORTRAN a little easier for beginners.
My pet peve with both was very minimal string
handling, I want to answer
"yes|YES"
to a question not "1".
But what about "SI", "JA", "DA" . . .
Howzbout
if ((A[0] & 0x5F) <> 'N') . . .
Not a CS student and never thought that made
sense. Right up there with
every
machine shop student making a hammer. And not even a good one!
At least making a hammer would give you some of the concepts of forge
work. "If
you want to sort an array larger than 64K, then GET MORE RAM."
"If it's too slow, then use a faster computer." (also used by OS tech
support with, "I'm amazed that it can even RUN on such obsolete [1 year
old], inadequate [Are YOU inadequate?] hardware! Try something more
current!")
Thats broke. IF you can get a bigger machine, nice. Most cases
you use
what
you have as in the real world the purchasing isn't delivering before
your due date. "To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a
nail."
Or a thumb ;-)
Load it into memory and use a Shell Metzner sort is
NOT the right answer
for merging two file, finding the largest/smallest element in a large
file, finding the first screeful to display in order, nor even restoring
order to a fataset with a gew elements out of
place.
And after all, tape sorting algorithms are already invented.
Kind regards,
Alex.
--
"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and
looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison