I'm clearly not a sysadmin, but I do have a quick question.
Couldn't I write some code called "UberFooSpammingScript.pl" [notably in Perl], and send out email on another port? I'm sending email to port 25 on the remote machine. I'm not piggie-backing an email server at this point.
To be honest, I've been kind of disappointed by the lack of response for this topic. In fact, I'm rather upset at some of the snide remarks. I was a horrible student in high school. I had little skill in math. I hate to see someone give up their future profession over a few math classes. For the sake of disclosure, this post is coming from a guy whose now finishing his math degree. You're probably thinking "way to go with your strengths". However, you'd probably be right.
To give you an idea of where I'm coming from, I'm the guy who spent all of discrete math complaining about the lack of rigor. I'm the guy who yells "CHURCH'S THESIS" at the first sign of any "what is programming debate". I hate programming, but I've been doing it for years. In fact, there's a pretty good chance I'll end up being that egghead CS prof, who's really just an unemployed logician. I'll probably torture my students with abstract mathematics and unnecessary proofs.
I walked out of high school with a 2.5 GPA. I hated school. I remember telling my high school math teacher, if she even deserves that title, that it would be a cold day in hell before I'd ever study math. [To give you an idea of how bad this teacher was; she didn't understand the concept of base ANYTHING arithmetic. Certainly she used base 10, but she really had no idea what she was doing.] I figured I'd go to art school. However, being poor, I attended a local college instead.
Being the son of a math professor, who surprisingly never encouraged my interest in mathematics, upon entrance to college I was immediately thrust into a multi-variate calculus course. My father had a reputation for being a mathematical wiz. I guess they figured that this would have rubbed-off on me. In one of my ever-rare moments of reason, I decided to enroll in Calculus I instead. This was good, because my calculus-free high school math background was vastly inadequate.
During the third week of class, we had our first test [this was done to weed out people before the last day of withdraws]. I got a 30. You could have doubled my score and I still wouldn't have passed. Only one student got a decent grade and that was a B. Surprisingly, I actually did the homework for my calculus class. To this day, I still don't know why? I finished the semester with a B. I got an A for second semester calculus. Of course, I still didn't have the vaguest understanding of analysis, but neither does anyone else at this stage [okay, maybe this guy does....].
While taking a physics class, I wanted to understand the concept of energy. The definitions in the book were severely lacking [we used Resnick and Halliday]. So, I ventured to the library in search for an answer. I ran across an odd collection of books. It was the Feynman Lectures on Physics. I immediately knew these books was different. I was transfixed. Hours had passed and the sun had set. I didn't realize long I sat there reading the first few chapters. He made explanations accessible. He used Dennis the Menace to describe the conservation of energy. Feynman made sense. Thanks to Mr. Feynman, I managed to get an A in physics as well.
I still had bad study habits, but I spent quite a bit of my free time writing code in the computer lab. Eventually I got a job working for the school, doing a little IT and a little programming. I picked up work in town. Eventually I left school during the dot-com boom to write code full time.
Somewhere, during that time, I began a serious self-study of mathematics and science. I attribute such auto-didacticism to a general dissatisfaction with philosophy and religion. It was tough going at first, but after a while, I got use to the rigor. Unfortunately, it had the side effect of making me a pedantic smart-ass. Sometimes, I'm not sure if that's all bad.
My point is that anyone can learn to do math. You may never become a professional mathematici
Albert Einstein, who fancied himself as a violinist, was rehearsing a Haydn string quartet. When he failed for the fourth time to get his entry in the second movement, the cellist looked up and said, "The problem with you, Albert, is that you simply can't count."
I know this is a bit off-topic, but perhaps it's fitting given the un-Slashdot-like nature of the article.
I will never forgive the Greeks for their lack of experimentation. I think Greek philosophy is the epidimy of egghead theory. Being a future egghead theorist myself, I can't forgive the Greeks for not getting their hands dirty with science. How hard would it have been to verify some basic concepts of gravity like Galileo did at the Tower of Pisa? The man used his heartbeat as a stopwatch. Frankly a crumpled piece of paper would have disproved Aristotelian physics [Asimov's observation, not mine].
The uncrumpled piece of paper is attracted less slowly than the crumpled version despite the fact both contain the same amount of "earth". Thus, a counterexample to a previously accepted axiom.
The stupidity of the Pythagorean mystique was another source of grief.
In fact, it wasn't until the 16th century that mathematicians began to deviate from the Greek induced world of mathematics. Newton's work on Calculus was not only unique in application; it was unique because of its application. Leibnitz and Boole's independent work on logic was a revolutionary attempt at some reasonable method of mechanical proof. It was considered heresy among mathematicians to deviate from the Greek proofs [see Margaret Baron's "The Origins of the Infinitesimal Calculus"]. In this regard, the study of mathematics in the middle ages resembled the study of modern rhetoric in philosophy. At the time, Euclid's work [whether he discovered it himself is a source of debate as well] was still considered supreme.
I believe philosophy is best when quantified. I've always argued that mathematics at its heart is the rigorous method of reason. In fact, I think Godel embodies the essence of modern philosophy. Godel took deep philosophical statements about mathematics and quantified them with proof. He also published some work [albeit controversial at best] in the area of cosmology as well. While it is extremely difficult for the average mathematician or philosopher to duplicate his feats, this should be the ultimate goal. Make philosophy rigorous. Of course, I've always believed science is where philosophy and engineering meet.
Re:His comment on Slashdot:
on
More From Tanenbaum
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· Score: 5, Interesting
While I'm hardly a Linux zealot, I think Tanenbaum deserves quite a bit of credit. Tanenbaum's books are hands on. I'm not a CS major anymore; I'm a math major, so I don't claim to be up on every OS textbook in the field. However, I still like to get my hands dirty with interesting code and I've been a programmer professionally for several years.
I don't know Tanenbaum at all; however, his books are more hands on than the standard fare. My OS book didn't come with any usable code at all. Frankly, I had to force code into my class. In fact, my professor (old to the computer industry, but young to academia) was prompted to bring more required labs to the class because of it. I've picked up a few of Tanenbaum's books. In my opinion, it's as good at teaching operating systems as the "dragon" book is on teaching compiler design.
Why is Richard Stevens considered a genius and Tanenbaum not. Humility aside, like I said I never met the guy, most professors are a little bit pompous. As long as he doesn't torture his students with such BS, a little arrogance is fine by me. Including a small copy of a Unix-like variant to be examined with the book was revolutionary by pedagogical standards. I once had a copy of the "Lions Commentary on Unix". While it was interesting, it was written in C and Assembly (with some antiquated instruction set)**. The code was virtually useless for me. Despite popular opinion, I really don't have a PDP-11 in my basement. Tanenbaum's book|code was great. Finally a useful OS I could "play" with. Linux is too large to examine in a classroom. It's an industrial strength OS. Should I learn database theory by mucking with the source code for Oracle or DB2 (if this were even possible)? Of course not. Why should an OS be any different? You only learn by doing. You don't really learn by thinking about psuedocode. In this regard, MINIX fills a hole so desperately apparent in academia. MINIX provides a tangible example of modern OS design.
If you've had this man for a class and can relate a specific instance about his arrogance, feel free to do so. That's a completely different story. However, if you're going to knock the man for having some pride in his work -- well tough. It's not like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Gary Killdall, et al isn't a little bit of a "prick" too.
**I don't remember too much about the specifics of the "Lions Commentary on Unix".
Pacman is simple. Pinball is simple. RTSs like Starcraft are hard. Starcraft has numerous units to control. You won't survive that long until you've played through the various tutorials. That's the problem with gaming. Sure Starcraft isn't hard for an engineer. You probably eat RFCs for breakfast. There's a learning curve for the average video game. Most people don't want to have to pick up an instruction manual to play a game. Most people don't want to pick up an instruction manual at work. The average soccer mom|Joe Sixpack probably doesn't play chess either. Look, *craft is fun, but it's just not for everybody.
Actually, the camera people shouldn't have any problem finding new jobs. Raw skills like film editing and production are easily transfered. It's the actors who often have problems finding work.
However, lawyers aren't usually OSS friendly. if you can navigate the headaches, knock yourself out. If McDonalds and Subway can franchise, so can OSS.
You can use embedded-SQL, stored procedures, or perhaps (if you're careful|lucky) pull off similar performance from a prepared statement.
In many cases, the real overhead isn't the query, but merely passing the large amounts of data from the db to the app server. It depends.
THE issue with web based applications**
I run into the portability vs. speed issue all the time. It's THE fundamental issue with web-based architectures. OO Design on a large-scale, web-based system can be tough. If you want to build a solid but simple web based application without invoking RPC, COM, CORBA, EJB or the like, a true OO design can be near impossible. How do you build objects around queries? Should a list of employees be a collection of employee objects? Should each employee constructor invoke a query to the employee table? Probably not.
**Admittedly, usability and the lack of a good UI for the web is a problem as well.
some questions to ponder
What kind of performance do you need? How many users are expected to use the system? How much data are you going to support? Is data updated constantly or nightly? This doesn't even begin to take into account the fact I have no idea what your existing application does or how it's built.
my best advice
I've found code reuse doesn't occur for web-based apps. Especially if this is in-house stuff. In that case, go for speed. However, if you are attempting to build a marketable product, portability is probably more important. You really haven't given us enough details.
What if I told you taht this individual finished his degree in an off-site evening-degree or distance learning program?
We live in an era of cheap paper. You can buy your diploma from just about anywhere. Sure, some quality is there, but it's not the same. Would you really want to hire somebody who studied rocket science at home? Schools don't make engineers; that's why co-ops, internships, and senior projects are important.
Doctors are a poor example. First, doctors have years of on-job-training before they can actually be doctors. Med school is just the beginning. Plus, how often do you know whether you doctor is an "el doctoro" [an off-shore med school graduate]. Often times, you can tell whether someone is competent just by talking to them.
The Turing Machine was never meant to be the model of a computer. It is the ultimate definition of what it means to do math. It just happens to be that programming is math. There is no distinction. That's why Kleene's use of recursive functions to describe mathematics was important too.
Conrad Zuse was a brilliant engineer. However, he never formalized the ultimate mathematical definition of what it means to compute! Hardware and software are indistinguishable in this regard.
**Actually a rather pedantic point. Turing defined the notion of discrete state-based computation. Thus creating a definition of what it means to do math. However the notion of computation (even by logicians) has been noted to include analog and continuous phenomena.
Although I see no problem paying respect to an underappreciated mathematician, I'm always a little weary of how we seem to forget the contributions of others. For instance, Martin Davis in his book "Computability and Unsolvability" refers to Turing machines as a Turing-Post machine (perhaps a nod to his former undergraduate advisor). Also, Kleene invented the notion of a "primitive recursive functions". This was shown by Alonzo Church to be equally as powerful as Turing's Universal Computer. In other words, there were alot of guys involved in developing the foundations of computer science. How often do you hear of Emil Post, Stephen Kleene, and Alonzo Church? Heck, it was quite 'en vogue' to create fundemental models of computation|mathematics. I've seen models bearing the names of Markov, Godel, etc. "Computability: An Introduction to Recursive Function Theory" by Nigel Cutland has a chapter devoted to the subject.
Why does it have to be HTTP friendly? You can create network apps with other ports and other protocols. Heck, HTTP is a clear text protocol. Also, the stateless nature of HTTP is kind of a hinderence.
Where you a physics major? Introductory courses tend to be that way. Engineering courses are by the book, because engineering is by the book. This isn't an insult to engineering; it's just that your average engineer isn't going to ask for any great reasoning about relativistic correction. Instead, engineers are concerned about the process of putting things together to make them work. You'll find that in more focused upper-division and graduate course work (engineering or the sciences); books become less mandatory, especially if the professor is a researcher in the field.
Do us all a favor and cut the sarcasm! I'd be more sarcastic, but I'm trying not to sound like a troll.
If the guy has been writing code for a while, he can make the switch. I'm guessing he's working in C++ shop, thus there will be some senior coders around to help him out.
Use one of the first two books for syntax, and use the rest to further your knowledge quickly.
For syntax: C++ in a Nutshell by Ray Lischner
OR
Sams Teach Yourself C++ in 10 Minutes by Jesse Liberty, Mark Cashman
For examples: The C/C++ Users Journal (from the publishers of Dr. Dobbs) http://www.cuj.com/
Effective C++ Cd: 85 Specific Ways to Improve Your Programs and Designs By Scott Meyers
Frankly, there are a ton of similar books out there...
At some undisclosed site (Amazon.com) their data miners|web agent|sentient AI suggests:
C++ Gotchas: Avoiding Common Problems in Coding and Design by Stephen C. Dewhurst
Other advice: Try to find some good sample code. Take a cleanly written open-source utility or something from MSDN and try to extend a feature in the software. That's how I learn. (yes, haha, I send cleanly written and OSS|MSDN in the same sentence...)
While I've heard logicians complain it is the most overused theory in mathematics, I argue Church's Thesis is philosophically the most fundamental. Mathematics is the method of reason applied real world problems. Mathematics is also nothing more than a collection of definitions and step-by-step processes. (I've also recently realized encoding mechanisms are important too.)
Church's Thesis simply stated (perhaps overly so), says that no universal computer is better than another. Thus, math and the computer program are the same. Am I worried, about computer programs eventually replacing mathematicians? No. Canonically logic defines all of mathematics. If I create a computer program that solves math problems in a deterministic fashion, then the computer program becomes mathematics. If I create a computer program that solves math problems in a probabilistic fashion, I will have sufficiently crippled it, so that it will actually solve problem in a rather human-like fashion. In other words, it will not be programmer doing math that is solving problems, it will be some rough statistical approximation of our probabilistic human brains working 'in silico'. (Actually, probability is kind of the black box of human reason. If I state that something has a 1 out of 2 chance of happening [i.e. an event can occur or not occur], then we say it is random. If I say that event A (as opposed to event B) has a 6 out of 10 chance of occurring, we say that event A is more likely, event though we have no real reason of 'knowing' why this event occurs.)
I say all of this to make a point, math and computer science (in the abstract sense) is virtually the same thing. The computer program is becoming math. Logicians are starting to verify (and even prove [see some of Chaitin's work]) quite a bit of their mathematics in code. It has now become en vogue to look at problems in terms of initial configurations and the simple sets of instructions that define how the configurations behave [see Wolfram's work]. Thus, the line between mathematics and computer science are further blurring. Most of the really fascinating work being done in applying K-complexity (algorithmic information theory) to real world problems are being done by computer scientists [quantum information theorists also are doing quite a bit of interesting work as well].
On a personal note, I've returned to school to finish a degree in Math. Previously when I attended school, I studied Computer Science. I decided to take some extra math classes for the heck of it. As a result, the advanced math courses (abstract algebra, non-Euclidean geometry, etc) served as electives in my CS degree. As a whole, I've found most CS departments don't view math classes in this way. The intersection of the two curriculums is very minimal. For instance, if I take a course from the Math department in 'recursive function theory', most CS departments [at least the one's I looked at] wouldn't take the course as an elective. If I take a 'Theory of Computation' as an elective in the CS department, most Math departments won't treat it as an elective either. I'm working my way through school so I couldn't afford to go anywhere but a state school. However, I'm a bit disgusted at this distancing of CS from Math. Most CS departments are becoming part of the School of Engineering so they can be ABET certified. While this seems good, CS is often viewed at 'baby' engineering. "If you can't hack EE, go to the CS department." Even worse most EEs shun pure math (a few brilliant counterexamples exist [Shannon, Zadeh, McCarthy, etc]). With this said, find me an EE who has studied pure math, and I will find you a brilliant computer scientist.
A story, when written well, relates the human experience. Ultimately, the goal of the game is to allow you to experience life in an entirely different world. Narrative is not necessary in gaming. Even RPGs have limited storylines. One of the most popular series of all time, Ultima, has a story as a backdrop, but most of the plot is open ended. Frankly, game design is mostly a technical discipline. The game designer doesn't need to work as hard at capturing the imagination of the player.
Cinematic graphics are but one key in the future of gaming. The technical infrastructure of MMORPGs, the AI of NPCs and enemy characters, the usability of the modern video game are all issues. Frankly, I can't wait until gaming finally gets its psuedo-ray-tracing (1 million polygons**) in real-time so we can get on with developing the other side of gaming.
**I admit I only have an elementary understanding of graphic engines.
Slashdot Mirror
What kind of questions should you ask on Slashdot?
Questions about...
Exercise?
Mental Health?
Social Skills?
Hygene?
Dating?
Financial Planning?
Sports?
Frankly, this is one of the few topics Slashdot can answer.
You know, if he closes his browser he won't be able to actually read your message. :)
I'm clearly not a sysadmin, but I do have a quick question.
Couldn't I write some code called "UberFooSpammingScript.pl" [notably in Perl], and send out email on another port? I'm sending email to port 25 on the remote machine. I'm not piggie-backing an email server at this point.
Why do I have a feeling that on the bottom of some of these pages it says:
"This page was intentionally left blank!"
There's quite a bit of those "the physics of X" articles here.
To be honest, I've been kind of disappointed by the lack of response for this topic. In fact, I'm rather upset at some of the snide remarks. I was a horrible student in high school. I had little skill in math. I hate to see someone give up their future profession over a few math classes. For the sake of disclosure, this post is coming from a guy whose now finishing his math degree. You're probably thinking "way to go with your strengths". However, you'd probably be right.
To give you an idea of where I'm coming from, I'm the guy who spent all of discrete math complaining about the lack of rigor. I'm the guy who yells "CHURCH'S THESIS" at the first sign of any "what is programming debate". I hate programming, but I've been doing it for years. In fact, there's a pretty good chance I'll end up being that egghead CS prof, who's really just an unemployed logician. I'll probably torture my students with abstract mathematics and unnecessary proofs.
I walked out of high school with a 2.5 GPA. I hated school. I remember telling my high school math teacher, if she even deserves that title, that it would be a cold day in hell before I'd ever study math. [To give you an idea of how bad this teacher was; she didn't understand the concept of base ANYTHING arithmetic. Certainly she used base 10, but she really had no idea what she was doing.] I figured I'd go to art school. However, being poor, I attended a local college instead.
Being the son of a math professor, who surprisingly never encouraged my interest in mathematics, upon entrance to college I was immediately thrust into a multi-variate calculus course. My father had a reputation for being a mathematical wiz. I guess they figured that this would have rubbed-off on me. In one of my ever-rare moments of reason, I decided to enroll in Calculus I instead. This was good, because my calculus-free high school math background was vastly inadequate.
During the third week of class, we had our first test [this was done to weed out people before the last day of withdraws]. I got a 30. You could have doubled my score and I still wouldn't have passed. Only one student got a decent grade and that was a B. Surprisingly, I actually did the homework for my calculus class. To this day, I still don't know why? I finished the semester with a B. I got an A for second semester calculus. Of course, I still didn't have the vaguest understanding of analysis, but neither does anyone else at this stage [okay, maybe this guy does....].
While taking a physics class, I wanted to understand the concept of energy. The definitions in the book were severely lacking [we used Resnick and Halliday]. So, I ventured to the library in search for an answer. I ran across an odd collection of books. It was the Feynman Lectures on Physics. I immediately knew these books was different. I was transfixed. Hours had passed and the sun had set. I didn't realize long I sat there reading the first few chapters. He made explanations accessible. He used Dennis the Menace to describe the conservation of energy. Feynman made sense. Thanks to Mr. Feynman, I managed to get an A in physics as well.
I still had bad study habits, but I spent quite a bit of my free time writing code in the computer lab. Eventually I got a job working for the school, doing a little IT and a little programming. I picked up work in town. Eventually I left school during the dot-com boom to write code full time.
Somewhere, during that time, I began a serious self-study of mathematics and science. I attribute such auto-didacticism to a general dissatisfaction with philosophy and religion. It was tough going at first, but after a while, I got use to the rigor. Unfortunately, it had the side effect of making me a pedantic smart-ass. Sometimes, I'm not sure if that's all bad.
My point is that anyone can learn to do math. You may never become a professional mathematici
Albert Einstein, who fancied himself as a violinist, was rehearsing a Haydn string quartet. When he failed for the fourth time to get his entry in the second movement, the cellist looked up and said, "The problem with you, Albert, is that you simply can't count."
I know this is a bit off-topic, but perhaps it's fitting given the un-Slashdot-like nature of the article.
I will never forgive the Greeks for their lack of experimentation. I think Greek philosophy is the epidimy of egghead theory. Being a future egghead theorist myself, I can't forgive the Greeks for not getting their hands dirty with science. How hard would it have been to verify some basic concepts of gravity like Galileo did at the Tower of Pisa? The man used his heartbeat as a stopwatch. Frankly a crumpled piece of paper would have disproved Aristotelian physics [Asimov's observation, not mine].
The uncrumpled piece of paper is attracted less slowly than the crumpled version despite the fact both contain the same amount of "earth". Thus, a counterexample to a previously accepted axiom.
The stupidity of the Pythagorean mystique was another source of grief.
In fact, it wasn't until the 16th century that mathematicians began to deviate from the Greek induced world of mathematics. Newton's work on Calculus was not only unique in application; it was unique because of its application. Leibnitz and Boole's independent work on logic was a revolutionary attempt at some reasonable method of mechanical proof. It was considered heresy among mathematicians to deviate from the Greek proofs [see Margaret Baron's "The Origins of the Infinitesimal Calculus"]. In this regard, the study of mathematics in the middle ages resembled the study of modern rhetoric in philosophy. At the time, Euclid's work [whether he discovered it himself is a source of debate as well] was still considered supreme.
I believe philosophy is best when quantified. I've always argued that mathematics at its heart is the rigorous method of reason. In fact, I think Godel embodies the essence of modern philosophy. Godel took deep philosophical statements about mathematics and quantified them with proof. He also published some work [albeit controversial at best] in the area of cosmology as well. While it is extremely difficult for the average mathematician or philosopher to duplicate his feats, this should be the ultimate goal. Make philosophy rigorous. Of course, I've always believed science is where philosophy and engineering meet.
While I'm hardly a Linux zealot, I think Tanenbaum deserves quite a bit of credit. Tanenbaum's books are hands on. I'm not a CS major anymore; I'm a math major, so I don't claim to be up on every OS textbook in the field. However, I still like to get my hands dirty with interesting code and I've been a programmer professionally for several years.
I don't know Tanenbaum at all; however, his books are more hands on than the standard fare. My OS book didn't come with any usable code at all. Frankly, I had to force code into my class. In fact, my professor (old to the computer industry, but young to academia) was prompted to bring more required labs to the class because of it. I've picked up a few of Tanenbaum's books. In my opinion, it's as good at teaching operating systems as the "dragon" book is on teaching compiler design.
Why is Richard Stevens considered a genius and Tanenbaum not. Humility aside, like I said I never met the guy, most professors are a little bit pompous. As long as he doesn't torture his students with such BS, a little arrogance is fine by me. Including a small copy of a Unix-like variant to be examined with the book was revolutionary by pedagogical standards. I once had a copy of the "Lions Commentary on Unix". While it was interesting, it was written in C and Assembly (with some antiquated instruction set)**. The code was virtually useless for me. Despite popular opinion, I really don't have a PDP-11 in my basement. Tanenbaum's book|code was great. Finally a useful OS I could "play" with. Linux is too large to examine in a classroom. It's an industrial strength OS. Should I learn database theory by mucking with the source code for Oracle or DB2 (if this were even possible)? Of course not. Why should an OS be any different? You only learn by doing. You don't really learn by thinking about psuedocode. In this regard, MINIX fills a hole so desperately apparent in academia. MINIX provides a tangible example of modern OS design.
If you've had this man for a class and can relate a specific instance about his arrogance, feel free to do so. That's a completely different story. However, if you're going to knock the man for having some pride in his work -- well tough. It's not like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Gary Killdall, et al isn't a little bit of a "prick" too.
**I don't remember too much about the specifics of the "Lions Commentary on Unix".
Usability, usability, usability!
Pacman is simple. Pinball is simple. RTSs like Starcraft are hard. Starcraft has numerous units to control. You won't survive that long until you've played through the various tutorials. That's the problem with gaming. Sure Starcraft isn't hard for an engineer. You probably eat RFCs for breakfast. There's a learning curve for the average video game. Most people don't want to have to pick up an instruction manual to play a game. Most people don't want to pick up an instruction manual at work. The average soccer mom|Joe Sixpack probably doesn't play chess either. Look, *craft is fun, but it's just not for everybody.
Actually, the camera people shouldn't have any problem finding new jobs. Raw skills like film editing and production are easily transfered. It's the actors who often have problems finding work.
I'm a programmer, so sure it sounds great.
However, lawyers aren't usually OSS friendly. if you can navigate the headaches, knock yourself out. If McDonalds and Subway can franchise, so can OSS.
It depends.
There are many ways to query
You can use embedded-SQL, stored procedures, or perhaps (if you're careful|lucky) pull off similar performance from a prepared statement.
In many cases, the real overhead isn't the query, but merely passing the large amounts of data from the db to the app server. It depends.
THE issue with web based applications**
I run into the portability vs. speed issue all the time. It's THE fundamental issue with web-based architectures. OO Design on a large-scale, web-based system can be tough. If you want to build a solid but simple web based application without invoking RPC, COM, CORBA, EJB or the like, a true OO design can be near impossible. How do you build objects around queries? Should a list of employees be a collection of employee objects? Should each employee constructor invoke a query to the employee table? Probably not.
**Admittedly, usability and the lack of a good UI for the web is a problem as well.
some questions to ponder
What kind of performance do you need? How many users are expected to use the system? How much data are you going to support? Is data updated constantly or nightly? This doesn't even begin to take into account the fact I have no idea what your existing application does or how it's built.
my best advice
I've found code reuse doesn't occur for web-based apps. Especially if this is in-house stuff. In that case, go for speed. However, if you are attempting to build a marketable product, portability is probably more important. You really haven't given us enough details.
Would you hire an engineer who recieved his degree from Columbia, Johns Hopkins, or Georgia Tech?
What if I told you taht this individual finished his degree in an off-site evening-degree or distance learning program?
We live in an era of cheap paper. You can buy your diploma from just about anywhere. Sure, some quality is there, but it's not the same. Would you really want to hire somebody who studied rocket science at home? Schools don't make engineers; that's why co-ops, internships, and senior projects are important.
Doctors are a poor example. First, doctors have years of on-job-training before they can actually be doctors. Med school is just the beginning. Plus, how often do you know whether you doctor is an "el doctoro" [an off-shore med school graduate]. Often times, you can tell whether someone is competent just by talking to them.
The Turing Machine was never meant to be the model of a computer. It is the ultimate definition of what it means to do math. It just happens to be that programming is math. There is no distinction. That's why Kleene's use of recursive functions to describe mathematics was important too.
I'll rant again....
CHURCH'S THESIS, CHURCH'S THESIS, CHURCH'S THESIS!
Conrad Zuse was a brilliant engineer. However, he never formalized the ultimate mathematical definition of what it means to compute! Hardware and software are indistinguishable in this regard.
**Actually a rather pedantic point. Turing defined the notion of discrete state-based computation. Thus creating a definition of what it means to do math. However the notion of computation (even by logicians) has been noted to include analog and continuous phenomena.
Although I see no problem paying respect to an underappreciated mathematician, I'm always a little weary of how we seem to forget the contributions of others. For instance, Martin Davis in his book "Computability and Unsolvability" refers to Turing machines as a Turing-Post machine (perhaps a nod to his former undergraduate advisor). Also, Kleene invented the notion of a "primitive recursive functions". This was shown by Alonzo Church to be equally as powerful as Turing's Universal Computer. In other words, there were alot of guys involved in developing the foundations of computer science. How often do you hear of Emil Post, Stephen Kleene, and Alonzo Church? Heck, it was quite 'en vogue' to create fundemental models of computation|mathematics. I've seen models bearing the names of Markov, Godel, etc. "Computability: An Introduction to Recursive Function Theory" by Nigel Cutland has a chapter devoted to the subject.
Why does it have to be HTTP friendly? You can create network apps with other ports and other protocols. Heck, HTTP is a clear text protocol. Also, the stateless nature of HTTP is kind of a hinderence.
Where you a physics major? Introductory courses tend to be that way. Engineering courses are by the book, because engineering is by the book. This isn't an insult to engineering; it's just that your average engineer isn't going to ask for any great reasoning about relativistic correction. Instead, engineers are concerned about the process of putting things together to make them work. You'll find that in more focused upper-division and graduate course work (engineering or the sciences); books become less mandatory, especially if the professor is a researcher in the field.
Do us all a favor and cut the sarcasm! I'd be more sarcastic, but I'm trying not to sound like a troll.
If the guy has been writing code for a while, he can make the switch. I'm guessing he's working in C++ shop, thus there will be some senior coders around to help him out.
Use one of the first two books for syntax, and use the rest to further your knowledge quickly.
For syntax:
C++ in a Nutshell
by Ray Lischner
OR
Sams Teach Yourself C++ in 10 Minutes
by Jesse Liberty, Mark Cashman
For examples:
The C/C++ Users Journal (from the publishers of Dr. Dobbs)
http://www.cuj.com/
Effective C++ Cd: 85 Specific Ways to Improve Your Programs and Designs
By Scott Meyers
Frankly, there are a ton of similar books out there...
At some undisclosed site (Amazon.com) their data miners|web agent|sentient AI suggests:
C++ Gotchas: Avoiding Common Problems in Coding and Design
by Stephen C. Dewhurst
Other advice:
Try to find some good sample code. Take a cleanly written open-source utility or something from MSDN and try to extend a feature in the software. That's how I learn.
(yes, haha, I send cleanly written and OSS|MSDN in the same sentence...)
I'm sure some engineer mentioned these features, but then they realized they actually wanted to get this product out the door.
While I've heard logicians complain it is the most overused theory in mathematics, I argue Church's Thesis is philosophically the most fundamental. Mathematics is the method of reason applied real world problems. Mathematics is also nothing more than a collection of definitions and step-by-step processes. (I've also recently realized encoding mechanisms are important too.)
Church's Thesis simply stated (perhaps overly so), says that no universal computer is better than another. Thus, math and the computer program are the same. Am I worried, about computer programs eventually replacing mathematicians? No. Canonically logic defines all of mathematics. If I create a computer program that solves math problems in a deterministic fashion, then the computer program becomes mathematics. If I create a computer program that solves math problems in a probabilistic fashion, I will have sufficiently crippled it, so that it will actually solve problem in a rather human-like fashion. In other words, it will not be programmer doing math that is solving problems, it will be some rough statistical approximation of our probabilistic human brains working 'in silico'. (Actually, probability is kind of the black box of human reason. If I state that something has a 1 out of 2 chance of happening [i.e. an event can occur or not occur], then we say it is random. If I say that event A (as opposed to event B) has a 6 out of 10 chance of occurring, we say that event A is more likely, event though we have no real reason of 'knowing' why this event occurs.)
I say all of this to make a point, math and computer science (in the abstract sense) is virtually the same thing. The computer program is becoming math. Logicians are starting to verify (and even prove [see some of Chaitin's work]) quite a bit of their mathematics in code. It has now become en vogue to look at problems in terms of initial configurations and the simple sets of instructions that define how the configurations behave [see Wolfram's work]. Thus, the line between mathematics and computer science are further blurring. Most of the really fascinating work being done in applying K-complexity (algorithmic information theory) to real world problems are being done by computer scientists [quantum information theorists also are doing quite a bit of interesting work as well].
On a personal note, I've returned to school to finish a degree in Math. Previously when I attended school, I studied Computer Science. I decided to take some extra math classes for the heck of it. As a result, the advanced math courses (abstract algebra, non-Euclidean geometry, etc) served as electives in my CS degree. As a whole, I've found most CS departments don't view math classes in this way. The intersection of the two curriculums is very minimal. For instance, if I take a course from the Math department in 'recursive function theory', most CS departments [at least the one's I looked at] wouldn't take the course as an elective. If I take a 'Theory of Computation' as an elective in the CS department, most Math departments won't treat it as an elective either. I'm working my way through school so I couldn't afford to go anywhere but a state school. However, I'm a bit disgusted at this distancing of CS from Math. Most CS departments are becoming part of the School of Engineering so they can be ABET certified. While this seems good, CS is often viewed at 'baby' engineering. "If you can't hack EE, go to the CS department." Even worse most EEs shun pure math (a few brilliant counterexamples exist [Shannon, Zadeh, McCarthy, etc]). With this said, find me an EE who has studied pure math, and I will find you a brilliant computer scientist.
A story, when written well, relates the human experience. Ultimately, the goal of the game is to allow you to experience life in an entirely different world. Narrative is not necessary in gaming. Even RPGs have limited storylines. One of the most popular series of all time, Ultima, has a story as a backdrop, but most of the plot is open ended. Frankly, game design is mostly a technical discipline. The game designer doesn't need to work as hard at capturing the imagination of the player.
Cinematic graphics are but one key in the future of gaming. The technical infrastructure of MMORPGs, the AI of NPCs and enemy characters, the usability of the modern video game are all issues. Frankly, I can't wait until gaming finally gets its psuedo-ray-tracing (1 million polygons**) in real-time so we can get on with developing the other side of gaming.
**I admit I only have an elementary understanding of graphic engines.
I prefer the british spelling:
colour
flavour
etc
It's more elegant.