I'd say it largely depends on what level you're programming at. The level I program at, it's quite rare in my experience to find large efficiency gains in one single algorithm. More often, large code-bases and multiple programmers working on one project create a flow in the code that itself is inefficient, e.g. data that is retrieved more than once, or in too small chunks, or too large chunks, loops that don't get jumped out of, etc. I wouldn't call that mathematics.
I'm sorry. The nuances of the difference between Software Developement & Computer Science are lost on me, as I have no intimate knowledge of your educational system. I'm dutch you know.
Actually, I didn't even have a formal education in computers, but I can hold my own with formally educated programmers and have done so for over 10 years now.
But if coding is mathematics, please tell me were logic goes. And don't tell me it's part of mathematics.
"Oh well. I don't think I would need to study for this competition, in college I never studied for a computer science exam. It was my theory that if I couldn't deduce the problem on the fly, then I shouldn't be coding at all. Coding isn't about regurgitation or memorization, it's about how you instinctively attack a problem."
And then forgetting all about how you did it, so you can solve the same problem in the same short-sighted way infinitely in the years to come. Way to go, cowboy!
I'm just guessing here, but I figure you're not a coder. If you were, you'd know that coding typically has very little to do with mathematics.
I think it's not politeness, I think they're plain right. I'm a programmer by profession and I sure as hell don't have the time or even the inclination to enter a contest. I'll settle for a beer and some computer games after coding the whole day long, thank you.
"Americans reported twice the rate of diabetes compared to the English, 12.5 percent versus 6 percent. For high blood pressure, it was 42 percent for Americans versus 34 percent for the English; cancer showed up in 9.5 percent of Americans compared to 5.5 percent of the English."
I am dutch, but have been to the states a lot as my parents have lived there on several occasions. My impressions:
Higher diabetes rates could well be explained by the large amounts of sugar in lots of food products in America. Even the bread was very sweet to my senses, let alone the rediculous amounts of soft drinks consumed( "would you like a refill for that half-a-litre of coke you just drained?" ).
Higher blood pressure: higher work stress. I don't think I need expand on this, it's a well known fact that Americans work more and have less holidays/vacations.
Also less physical exercise will not help either conditions.
But the higher cancer rates quite baffle me. Strange stuff.
I can't believe no one picked up on this comment. Mr Payette here is giving us interesting insight into the reasons for the object-orientatedness of the shell.
As I understand it, the difference between PowerShell and your typical Unix shell is that the Unix OS is built around the shell and PowerShell is built around the OS.
As text exchange of data is the de facto way of piping data between applications in a unix system and the shell has long been the de facto way of interacting with the OS and the applications running on it most applications and the OS itself have been built to interact very well with the shell.
However, on windows, which hasn't been built around the shell and which presents objects as the standard way to share data, they had the choice of either a: adding functionality to all applications in order to allow it to interact in a text-based way with cmd.exe, which is rediculous because of the vast number of applications already out. OR b: writing a shell built to integrate with the OS and the objects it uses to exchange data, which they did with PowerShell.
Basically, this seems a sound design decision which probably has it drawbacks (necessity for data type handling & such ) but seems like a good match for winOS'es. An object orientated shell would probably not work very well with a unix OS, if only for the fact that (most?) unixes are written in C, which does not do objects at all.
Seems like a good solution for windows systems, too bad it isn't (won't be?) included with the OS by default. It might make windows a better place to live for all us CLI types, and it can't possibly be worse than cmd.exe, can it?
"Microsoft has identified reducing piracy as a key way for the company to grow its sales of Windows, which is already used on more than 90 percent of personal computers."
Reducing piracy is also the most sure way of reducing the number of people using Windows.
I find the microsoft stance on reducing piracy pretty half-hearted. If they can turn of Aero on pirated versions, they could also turn of the whole OS easily. They don't because the large market share, either payed for or not, helps keep them their monopoly.
They just can't come down on piracy, because they'll hurt themselves too much.
I live in Holland, with mostly Maroccan and Turkish Muslims around, and I really can't remember one family having a dog as pet.
As to making blanket statements about Muslims or Christians, I get your point, but still, I can make some perfectly valid blanket statements like 'they believe in a God' or 'Muslims don't eat pork' so it's not as simple as you imagine.
It's not entirely impossible that the person who writes the nuggets also writes 'nice, neat, tidy, well documented and easy to maintain code', you know. Some programmers with a little more talent don't think they have to, because they think they're gods gift to the company, but I'd rather have a person writes maintainable code than a cowboy coder, because a cowboy coder needs to do even his own work all over every few years, because he can't remember WTF this algorithm does, and he hasn't the documentation to refresh his memory.
Only muslims don't generally take dogs as housepets because they're considered to be unclean -- but hell, who cares about details if they're really terrorists -- uhm, I mean muslim.
... who in WWII trained dogs with explosives to run to tanks and detonate their charges. When they deployed them against german tanks, the dogs immediately made U-turns and headed for the russian tanks quite a distance away, and managed to destroy quite a few of those.
The russians had obviously underestimated the dogs intelligence. The were able to distinguish the differances between a russian and a german tank, and had been trained with russian tanks... talk about explode in your face.
Danish Jew population before the war: a few thousand Dutch Jew population before the war: a few hundreds of thousand.
The danish resistance had the convient luck that neutral Sweden was only 30 odd miles away over water. The ferried most of them over in one(!) night.
Yes, I'm dutch, yes my grandparents, greatgrandparents maybe didn't do everything they could to save the jews, but this comparison with Denmark, I've heard it before, and it's just too easy.
One, when New Orleans was founded, it was not below sea level.
Two, the French were no fools to settle there; in those days the Mississippi was _the_ vital transportation route inlands, and a very strategically important point to take control of; militarily, economically and otherwise.
Three, cities are not built overnight you know. They evolve. Even if the location of a city doesn't make sense _anymore_, that doesn't mean it's a logical step to relocate a city. It don't think you have an inkling of an idea how rediculous it is to even consider moving a city of millions to another location.
They are talking about a 60% increase compared to a _decade_ before. The global population is growing quickly, but not that fast. So I don't think your comparison with 1803 is a valid counterargument to the increase of disasters.
He seems to make a unspoken assumption throughout the whole article, and that is that whoever does it quickest does it best. I find this strange a pretty strange assumption. Especially when he goes on with all the product examples where obviously not the speed of the development was essential, but the quality of the end product. Good quality needs a lot of creative thinking and that just costs a lot of time. Any ole programmer can hack together a script that does a certain task; taking a step back and actually thinking about the bigger picture takes time but in the end yields much better results.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd say it largely depends on what level you're programming at. The level I program at, it's quite rare in my experience to find large efficiency gains in one single algorithm. More often, large code-bases and multiple programmers working on one project create a flow in the code that itself is inefficient, e.g. data that is retrieved more than once, or in too small chunks, or too large chunks, loops that don't get jumped out of, etc. I wouldn't call that mathematics.
I'm sorry. The nuances of the difference between Software Developement & Computer Science are lost on me, as I have no intimate knowledge of your educational system. I'm dutch you know.
Actually, I didn't even have a formal education in computers, but I can hold my own with formally educated programmers and have done so for over 10 years now.
But if coding is mathematics, please tell me were logic goes. And don't tell me it's part of mathematics.
"Oh well. I don't think I would need to study for this competition, in college I never studied for a computer science exam. It was my theory that if I couldn't deduce the problem on the fly, then I shouldn't be coding at all. Coding isn't about regurgitation or memorization, it's about how you instinctively attack a problem."
And then forgetting all about how you did it, so you can solve the same problem in the same short-sighted way infinitely in the years to come. Way to go, cowboy!
I'm just guessing here, but I figure you're not a coder. If you were, you'd know that coding typically has very little to do with mathematics.
I think it's not politeness, I think they're plain right. I'm a programmer by profession and I sure as hell don't have the time or even the inclination to enter a contest. I'll settle for a beer and some computer games after coding the whole day long, thank you.
Go tell them that in the Banlieu's
Those Texans will always keep fucking up their geography.
"Americans reported twice the rate of diabetes compared to the English, 12.5 percent versus 6 percent. For high blood pressure, it was 42 percent for Americans versus 34 percent for the English; cancer showed up in 9.5 percent of Americans compared to 5.5 percent of the English."
I am dutch, but have been to the states a lot as my parents have lived there on several occasions. My impressions:
Higher diabetes rates could well be explained by the large amounts of sugar in lots of food products in America. Even the bread was very sweet to my senses, let alone the rediculous amounts of soft drinks consumed( "would you like a refill for that half-a-litre of coke you just drained?" ).
Higher blood pressure: higher work stress. I don't think I need expand on this, it's a well known fact that Americans work more and have less holidays/vacations.
Also less physical exercise will not help either conditions.
But the higher cancer rates quite baffle me. Strange stuff.
I can't believe no one picked up on this comment. Mr Payette here is giving us interesting insight into the reasons for the object-orientatedness of the shell.
As I understand it, the difference between PowerShell and your typical Unix shell is that the Unix OS is built around the shell and PowerShell is built around the OS.
As text exchange of data is the de facto way of piping data between applications in a unix system and the shell has long been the de facto way of interacting with the OS and the applications running on it most applications and the OS itself have been built to interact very well with the shell.
However, on windows, which hasn't been built around the shell and which presents objects as the standard way to share data, they had the choice of either
a: adding functionality to all applications in order to allow it to interact in a text-based way with cmd.exe, which is rediculous because of the vast number of applications already out.
OR
b: writing a shell built to integrate with the OS and the objects it uses to exchange data, which they did with PowerShell.
Basically, this seems a sound design decision which probably has it drawbacks (necessity for data type handling & such ) but seems like a good match for winOS'es. An object orientated shell would probably not work very well with a unix OS, if only for the fact that (most?) unixes are written in C, which does not do objects at all.
Seems like a good solution for windows systems, too bad it isn't (won't be?) included with the OS by default. It might make windows a better place to live for all us CLI types, and it can't possibly be worse than cmd.exe, can it?
Ehm, sorry, not a native speaker ...
"Microsoft has identified reducing piracy as a key way for the company to grow its sales of Windows, which is already used on more than 90 percent of personal computers."
Reducing piracy is also the most sure way of reducing the number of people using Windows.
I find the microsoft stance on reducing piracy pretty half-hearted. If they can turn of Aero on pirated versions, they could also turn of the whole OS easily. They don't because the large market share, either payed for or not, helps keep them their monopoly.
They just can't come down on piracy, because they'll hurt themselves too much.
I live in Holland, with mostly Maroccan and Turkish Muslims around, and I really can't remember one family having a dog as pet.
As to making blanket statements about Muslims or Christians, I get your point, but still, I can make some perfectly valid blanket statements like 'they believe in a God' or 'Muslims don't eat pork' so it's not as simple as you imagine.
It's not entirely impossible that the person who writes the nuggets also writes 'nice, neat, tidy, well documented and easy to maintain code', you know. Some programmers with a little more talent don't think they have to, because they think they're gods gift to the company, but I'd rather have a person writes maintainable code than a cowboy coder, because a cowboy coder needs to do even his own work all over every few years, because he can't remember WTF this algorithm does, and he hasn't the documentation to refresh his memory.
Only muslims don't generally take dogs as housepets because they're considered to be unclean -- but hell, who cares about details if they're really terrorists -- uhm, I mean muslim.
... who in WWII trained dogs with explosives to run to tanks and detonate their charges. When they deployed them against german tanks, the dogs immediately made U-turns and headed for the russian tanks quite a distance away, and managed to destroy quite a few of those.
... talk about explode in your face.
The russians had obviously underestimated the dogs intelligence. The were able to distinguish the differances between a russian and a german tank, and had been trained with russian tanks
It might be true what you say, but why am I being hit by internet explorer related worms/trojans/spyware when I never ever use IE to browse?
The problem with the way IE is intergrated into Windows is that even if I use another browser I keep to get the vulnerabilities of IE for free!
Precisely. It won't block you getting modded +5 insightfull.
... from our friends in South Korea ....
ROTFL
Danish Jew population before the war: a few thousand
Dutch Jew population before the war: a few hundreds of thousand.
The danish resistance had the convient luck that neutral Sweden was only 30 odd miles away over water. The ferried most of them over in one(!) night.
Yes, I'm dutch, yes my grandparents, greatgrandparents maybe didn't do everything they could to save the jews, but this comparison with Denmark, I've heard it before, and it's just too easy.
You, my friend, need to get a clue.
One, when New Orleans was founded, it was not below sea level.
Two, the French were no fools to settle there; in those days the Mississippi was _the_ vital transportation route inlands, and a very strategically important point to take control of; militarily, economically and otherwise.
Three, cities are not built overnight you know. They evolve. Even if the location of a city doesn't make sense _anymore_, that doesn't mean it's a logical step to relocate a city. It don't think you have an inkling of an idea how rediculous it is to even consider moving a city of millions to another location.
A prototype isn't "Well, it's got a couple of bugs, but otherwise it's ready". That's a product, isn't it?
They are talking about a 60% increase compared to a _decade_ before. The global population is growing quickly, but not that fast. So I don't think your comparison with 1803 is a valid counterargument to the increase of disasters.
Gmail (known as Google Mail for legal reasons in some areas) is finally open to everyone
AND
Please take note that sign-up occurs via mobile phone at the moment, and only U.S. citizens can register for now.
Is this some new and US-centric use of 'everyone' that I am not yet aware of, or does _anyone_ else in the states see an apparent contradiction?
Puma's are solitary, whereas lions, as one of the few cat species, are not.
Tell me: how can you see this is actually the motherboard in question?
He seems to make a unspoken assumption throughout the whole article, and that is that whoever does it quickest does it best. I find this strange a pretty strange assumption. Especially when he goes on with all the product examples where obviously not the speed of the development was essential, but the quality of the end product. Good quality needs a lot of creative thinking and that just costs a lot of time. Any ole programmer can hack together a script that does a certain task; taking a step back and actually thinking about the bigger picture takes time but in the end yields much better results.