The lost art (Was: The VAX is running

On 12 Apr 2009 at 21:53, Jay West wrote: CS grads don't do external sorts. ;) Not that the experts are particularly easy to work with. I recall one very memorable episode where the compiler front-end writer and the optimizer writer couldn't agree on the type of tree (binary or n- ary) to use for the internal representation of a compilation unit. The argument went on for more than a month, while both parties were writing their code trying to be the first done so that their method would be the one adopted. Neither would give an inch. I finally ended up writing the code to transform a n-ary tree into it's binary representation. Utter insanity just to keep the peace. Both participants were CS PhDs, who should have known better. --Chuck