8 Jun
2013
8 Jun
'13
8:15 p.m.
On 08/06/13 9:32 PM, Alexander Schreiber wrote:
On Mon, Jun 03, 2013 at 04:17:07PM -0700, Fred Cisin
wrote:
Alas, writing "efficient" software seems to be rejected on the grounds
that
1) "Modern compilers optimize better than a human possibly could"
2) "The upcoming round of machines will be so fast that there is no need
to bother with that stuff" (being efficient)
*sigh*
Whoever claims that urgently needs some enlightenment. As in "lets peel
back the foreskin of ignorance and apply the wirebrush of enlightenment".
Yes, _microoptimization_ on the single instruction level is _usually_
wasted effort, with good modern compilers mostly being much better than
programmers. However, large scale optimization, e.g. choosing a better
algorithm is a different matter. That is still (and will remain) very
Indeed, and this is why "C is fast" is effectively a fallacy.
It is very easy to write a slow C program, and lots of people do it.
It's not clear how an average developer gets exposed to the concepts of
time/space complexity outside a CS degree.
--T
Boyle's law predicts that software will expand faster than hardware, to
occupy all available resources, and then some.
:?) Interesting usage of it.
much relevant unless you are only tackling trivial
problems. Yes, if you
are only sorting a few hundred items on a current Intel CPU, it doesn't
matter if your algorithm is O(n^2) or O(n^3). If you are sorting reasonably
large datasets (more than few dozen million items), things look very
different.
When I taught beginning Data Structures And
Algorithms, I always got a few
students who rejected the idea of being efficient ("throw hardware at
it"), and specifically objected to spending an entire 3 hour class session
on how to create algorithms for sorting and searching datasets too big to
fit into memory ("just get a bigger computer and load it all into a single
array in memory!")
...
Kind regards,
Alex.
[0] We have data storage systems that trigger emergency alerts when they
are down to their last few petabytes of remaining free storage.