Re: What's the best language to start with

["Alexander E. Kopilovitch" <aek@pcaek.spb.su>]

In <dewar.839593445@schonberg> dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes:

>Over and over again I see cases of careful and well written implementations
>of completely absurd algorithms for standard problems, where quite
>obviously the programmer was simply unaware that there are much better
>solutions known.

It means that this "programmer" is not programmer indeed, but software
engineer. The combination of "careful and well written implementations" and
"completely absurd algorithms" is characteristic for substantional part of
the growing mass of these brave software engineers.

> For
>instance, if you want to compute eigenvalues of a large matrix, then
>you CERTAINLY do not try to invent your algorithm, and you probably don't
>even go and look up an algorithm, instead you use a standard library.

Not CERTAINLY. In most cases - yes, but not certainly, as you are programmer,
not software engineer. Definitely, you have no chance to invent general
algorithm for computing of eigenvalues better then already published ones,
but sometimes you have a chance to discover that computing of eigenvalues
aren't really needed to solve the problem, but much simpler task may be
performed instead.

>Reuse, of both code in standard libraries, and of ideas, in the form of
>published algorithms, is a key, perhaps *the* key, tool in a programmers
>arsenal.

All these are tools for local optimizations of the problem solution. They
can produce global optimum if you have guessed proper overall structure of
the program/problem.


---------------------------------------------------------------
Alexander Kopilovitch                      aek@vib.usr.pu.ru
Saint-Petersburg
Russia