"I seem to remember that Nobel shafted these guys because his wife doinked a mathematician while they were married."
Urban legend. He was never married.
Somehow I knew that mentioning Moore's law on/. was a bad idea;) But seriously, did you read my post? I don't "write grossly inefficient code, banking on the fact that processors will get faster". Do you write inefficient code, banking on the fact that future compilers will magically make it 10x faster?
My main point was about the standards compliance of the compiler. Frankly, I couldn't care less if GCC 4.0 produces 5% faster or slower code. A couple years ago, I tried to move a project from GCC to VC++ 6. After a couple days of rewriting perfectly valid code to get the idiotic VC++ compiler to compile it, I gave up. I didn't care that VC++ was faster or made faster code. I wanted to be able to write good code.
A 0.3% speed increase multiplied by 10e4 is still 0.3%, which is still unnoticable. I think a compiler should be judged primarily on how it affects the productivity of the developer. If it doesn't handle standard C++ (or other language), then you have to spend half your time "porting" C++ to C++. Compile time also comes into play, especially in large projects where compile times can be several minutes long.
When I saw "GCC 4.0 Review", I expected to see a review of the way the compilers (especially C++) handles the syntax. Is the compiler any closer to the C++ specification? Has it improved the way it handles templates? Is it likely to break old code? All he talked about was tiny little speed increases (or lack thereof). If a speed increase is less than 20%, it's probably not even noticable. And thanks to Moore's law, even a large speed increase will be irrelevant in a short time. I care more about my productivity as a developer.
I wonder what sort of implications any of this information has towards the millions of stutters around the world? Not as glamorous as aiming for big name diseases.
I don't really understand his concern. He writes in reference to what an average person might do after doing a google print search:
Are you going to print the book, and end up with 500
unbound sheets? Or will you request the actual book (in copyright or out)
through the active and developed interlibrary lending system that supplies
thousands of books daily to scholars, researchers and dilettantes
worldwide? The latter involves a short wait, of course. We all know that,
in Googleworld, speed is of the essence, but it is not to most scholarly
research in the real world.
If speed isn't essential to scholarly research in "the real world," why won't scholars continue to use his and other librarian's services? Google Print will cater to those people who won't go to the trouble of requesting books from other libraries and would, in the absence of a service like Google Print, would otherwise miss out on the information completely instead of getting it in at least in snippets.
In any case, Google's service isn't positioned as an information gathering resource anyway. It's supposed to be used to find books you might be interested in, and it works quite well at that. I've personally gone out and acquired copies of three books (at a library no less!) as a direct result of google print searches.
Slashdot Mirror
Damn it! When did /. start removing line feeds in posts again?
"I seem to remember that Nobel shafted these guys because his wife doinked a mathematician while they were married." Urban legend. He was never married.
Yup, /.ed
I hope they have liquid metal cooling on their servers.
Somehow I knew that mentioning Moore's law on /. was a bad idea ;) But seriously, did you read my post? I don't "write grossly inefficient code, banking on the fact that processors will get faster". Do you write inefficient code, banking on the fact that future compilers will magically make it 10x faster?
My main point was about the standards compliance of the compiler. Frankly, I couldn't care less if GCC 4.0 produces 5% faster or slower code. A couple years ago, I tried to move a project from GCC to VC++ 6. After a couple days of rewriting perfectly valid code to get the idiotic VC++ compiler to compile it, I gave up. I didn't care that VC++ was faster or made faster code. I wanted to be able to write good code.
A 0.3% speed increase multiplied by 10e4 is still 0.3%, which is still unnoticable. I think a compiler should be judged primarily on how it affects the productivity of the developer. If it doesn't handle standard C++ (or other language), then you have to spend half your time "porting" C++ to C++. Compile time also comes into play, especially in large projects where compile times can be several minutes long.
When I saw "GCC 4.0 Review", I expected to see a review of the way the compilers (especially C++) handles the syntax. Is the compiler any closer to the C++ specification? Has it improved the way it handles templates? Is it likely to break old code? All he talked about was tiny little speed increases (or lack thereof). If a speed increase is less than 20%, it's probably not even noticable. And thanks to Moore's law, even a large speed increase will be irrelevant in a short time. I care more about my productivity as a developer.
I wonder what sort of implications any of this information has towards the millions of stutters around the world? Not as glamorous as aiming for big name diseases.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/science/01/23/air.car /
how many people noticed it being austria instead of australia?
When a drop of ethanol is dropped on a surface...
I believe that when the shuttle was designed it was expected to have a 1 in 50 failure rate.. 2 out of 101 is what was expected
I don't really understand his concern. He writes in reference to what an average person might do after doing a google print search:
If speed isn't essential to scholarly research in "the real world," why won't scholars continue to use his and other librarian's services? Google Print will cater to those people who won't go to the trouble of requesting books from other libraries and would, in the absence of a service like Google Print, would otherwise miss out on the information completely instead of getting it in at least in snippets.In any case, Google's service isn't positioned as an information gathering resource anyway. It's supposed to be used to find books you might be interested in, and it works quite well at that. I've personally gone out and acquired copies of three books (at a library no less!) as a direct result of google print searches.