The Most Hated PC CPU

[Vanadium 50]

There is way too much concern about speed, and it comes way too early in the process.

There is no virtue in getting the wrong answer quickly.
It only makes sense to speed up the code that is slowing you down.

Unions are there for a reason.

 

[sbrothy]

I think in that particular case (Duff's) there was a reason. But I agree: see to it that it works first, then optimize if needed. Often it's also easier to just launch an extra identical process instead of fighting with making an already working program multithreaded. There be monsters that way.

EDIT: The GCC compiler (and presumably others) also come with a bunch of switches along the lines of "-O0", "-O1", "-O2" etc. Each doing their own thing for optimization without anyone touching the code.

They've worked wonders for me in the past.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Optimizers have been around for decades. They do what they do well, but they are not magic. Unrolling loops, they will do. Replacing your bubble sort with a heap sort? Usually not.

 

[sbrothy]

Compilers are advanced these days, but they still won't make your program for you. Although WYSIWYG will save you some time creating GUIs (I think. I must admit I'm not completely convinced. Also, I hardly consider creating GUIs "programming" apropos our little detour into algorithms.) Microsoft Developer Studio is a really nifty tool though. I've been playing around with Android Developer Studio and every time I use it I feel like I fractured my frontal lobe. It probably has to do with the latter being "coded" in java.

Even 3D studio, Reason or Cubase is lightning fast compared.

EDIT: In fact, if I wanted to write a book I wish I had an editor like Microsoft Developer Studio. Yeah,I know that doesn't really make sense. I just like the professionalism of it.
Speaking of which: Zen and the art of Writer Decks (using the Pomera DM250)



EDIT: I guess you can't have all. No DEV Studio on Linux. No emacs on Windows. Unless you want to venture into wine or cygwin. In fact, I've managed to run FruityLoops on Linux using Wine. I must admit that impressed me a little.

 

[Vanadium 50]

I don't understand the point you are trying to make.

 

[sbrothy]

EDIT:

I admit it's a little over the place. Don't bother with it. Probably time to close the thread before I make more of a fool of myself.