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BASIC programming challenge. Vowels and Consonants
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#21
 
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Re: BASIC programming challenge. Vowels and Consonants -
08-01-2010
, 05:52 PM
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On Jul 28, 7:18*pm, Charlie Noah <cwn... (AT) comcast (DOT) net> wrote: On Jul 27, 5:19*pm, Ross Ferris <ro... (AT) stamina (DOT) com.au> wrote: On Jul 28, 2:13*am, Douglas Tatelman <doug... (AT) pickteam (DOT) com> wrote: I've had a complete change of philosophy here. *What with quad processors and gigs of RAM, saving a few CPU cycles don't matter anymore. Programmers are now encouraged to waste resources to make the user experience better. Is this true in our environment? *Is everything fast enough now? Douglas Probably! One of our clients recently upgraded to dual quad core with SSD drives .... the system just FLIES!! User told me that now, it doesn't seem to matter WHAT they throw at the system, it just doesn't slow down. They used to have a "general slowdown" in the 3-5pm timeframe .... he called me last week to let me know that he did a filesave at around 3pm "just for fun" (as you can only do if you own the business :-), and he doesn't think anyone notice (ohhh, and the save out to a "real" disk mounted on a SAN took 20 mins, versus the 6 hours previously Douglas and Ross, No way, my friends! Just because you have super fast processors and drives, and gobs of memory, doesn't mean you can ignore your responsibility to program as efficiently as you can. This is especially true if you are running Windows, where bloated software tends to grow to fill all available resources. Now, you probably don't need to look for frame faults as we used to on the old Microdata machines, and you wouldn't want to make a system unmaintainable just for the sake of efficiency, but you shouldn't get sloppy either. Here's backup from someone on my very short list of heroes: "Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, U.S. Navy, deceased, spoke at New Mexico State University in approximately 1980. Here are some points she made: She gave everyone in attendance a small piece of very thin phone wire - 11.8 inches long, it was a nanosecond. She carried in her briefcase a coil of wire 960 feet long, weighing around 1.5 pounds. It represented a microsecond. She remarked that she would like to hang the coil of wire around the neck of any programmer who uttered don't worry, it's only a microsecond or two." 'Nuff said! Charlie Noah Inland Truck Parts Company Overland Park, KS, USA- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - **NEWSFLASH * NEWSFLASH * NEWSFLASH * NEWSFLAH If you have something like an iPhone on your hip, you probably have more compute power (and a HELL of a lot less wire!!) than those mainframes Grace was talking about! But, in the context of the statement "Programmers are now encouraged to waste resources to make the user experience better. ", then I make no apology for trying to improve the user experience. For example, do you use an INPUT statement for data entryt within your production programs, or do you have standard routine that you use that scans character by character so you can respond to things like function *or editing keys? Any idea how "wasteful" of resources this is? Do you think your USERS would be appreciative of you changing all input back to INPUT's? You appear to be asserting that in order to improve ANY aspect of that wonderful thing called "the user experience" you must be writing inefficient code? Not sure that those 2 things necessarily go hand in hand ... though I suppose I am jumping to the conclusion that you were talking about that cheap commodity embodied in "computer execution efficiency", rather than the EFFICIENCY of a programmer who can deliver workable solutions to a USER in less time than "the alternative" Seriously, I don't think an end user is going to be THAT worried if it takes 0.03s or 0.06s to update a record, provided it happens CORRECTLY! So, from my perspective you can explain that 960 feet of wire you are trying to take on a plane all by yourself (another one of those little changes in the last 20-30 years that has impacted the "user experience"!) |
Now you're just getting silly. I would have thought you were joking
but I didn't see a smiley! Ross said it very well: "The availability
of resources is not a license to be sloppy." Just because you can does
not mean that you should.
I don't advocate going back to the dark ages, I just think programmers
should think about what they are doing, and the impact they will have
on systems, before charging ahead. If I need to explain my position
further, please email me offline.
Regards,
Charlie
#22
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I figured I would interrupt all these messages about free money from Paypal and cheap jeans from China... |
dropped
UseNet and I started using google groups. Ouch, very ouch. =':^<
--
frosty
#23
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On Jul 21, 4:03 pm, Douglas Tatelman <doug... (AT) pickteam (DOT) com> wrote: I figured I would interrupt all these messages about free money from Paypal and cheap jeans from China... I didn't know exactly what you were talking about, until my ISP dropped UseNet and I started using google groups. Ouch, very ouch. =':^ |
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frosty
#24
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frosty wrote: On Jul 21, 4:03 pm, Douglas Tatelman<doug... (AT) pickteam (DOT) com> wrote: I figured I would interrupt all these messages about free money from Paypal and cheap jeans from China... I didn't know exactly what you were talking about, until my ISP dropped UseNet and I started using google groups. Ouch, very ouch. =':^ Using aioe.org and a newreader again... betterer. You could also try |
news.eternal-september.org
free and reliable
#25
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frosty wrote: On Jul 21, 4:03 pm, Douglas Tatelman<doug... (AT) pickteam (DOT) com> wrote: I figured I would interrupt all these messages about free money from Paypal and cheap jeans from China... I didn't know exactly what you were talking about, until my ISP dropped UseNet and I started using google groups. Ouch, very ouch. =':^ On 3/08/2010 6:04 AM, Frosty J. Hammer wrote: Using aioe.org and a newreader again... betterer. |
Quote:
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You could also try news.eternal-september.org free and reliable Works great. =`:^ |
Thanks, Rod! (Fred?)
--
frosty
#26
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frosty wrote: On Jul 21, 4:03 pm, Douglas Tatelman<doug... (AT) pickteam (DOT) com wrote: I figured I would interrupt all these messages about free money from Paypal and cheap jeans from China... I didn't know exactly what you were talking about, until my ISP dropped UseNet and I started using google groups. Ouch, very ouch. =':^ On 3/08/2010 6:04 AM, Frosty J. Hammer wrote: Using aioe.org and a newreader again... betterer. "RodS"<fred (AT) fred (DOT) com> wrote in message news:i38cgh$7ur$1 (AT) news (DOT) eternal-september.org... You could also try news.eternal-september.org free and reliable Works great. =`:^ Thanks, Rod! (Fred?) |
a new nntp provider. I switched to using news.albasani.net. Free text
groups. Works as advertised.
--
Cheers, SDM -- a 21st Century Schizoid Man
Systems Theory project website: http://systemstheory.net
find us on MySpace, GarageBand, Reverb Nation, Last FM, CDBaby
free MP3s of Systems Theory, Mike Dickson & Greg Amov music at
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