[mdlug] Parallella: A Supercomputer For Everyone by Adapteva — Kickstarter

[Michael Mol]

On Fri, Oct 12, 2012 at 1:54 AM, Aaron Kulkis <akulkis00 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Michael Mol wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 4:02 PM, Aaron Kulkis <akulkis00 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Garry Stahl wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 10/10/2012 05:31 PM, Aaron Kulkis wrote:

[snip]

>> The modern picture is much, much nicer and cheaper.
>>
>
>  I think the bigger problem is far too many programmers who
> have never endured a data-structures and algorithms course,
> and so instead of using proper data structures, like, say, a
> B-tree, store large amounts of data, instead go for a simple
> linear array, because that's all they're comfortable with.
>
> It's not always the case, but far too often.

That happens, but I don't think it happens often in most contexts. In
particular, I fervently believe most of the 'bloat' we see is in layer
upon layer of frameworks and abstraction libraries...and those things
(where broadly used) tend to have the hell optimized out of them--and
even so, it's exactly these layers of abstraction which are at the
center of the last thirty years' worth of bloat growth. At the same
time, those abstractions are what allow developers to rapidly produce
valuable code.

I can only think of one common context where the kinds of errors
you're describing would happen frequently enough to have a broad
impact: Terribly-written programs that run under Adobe Flash. Flash
gets a bad rap, but it's actually incredibly fast for what it
does...and it's little more than a fast operating environment for
sandboxed third-party code. Really, most of the bad rap Flash gets
comes from newbie programmers writing absolutely horrid code in Flash
applets, which then goes out and gets loaded into browsers around the
world for a few million views. Most of the rest of the bad rap Flash
gets comes from its attempts to be a sandbox for running untrusted
remote code on a local system...and I don't know any widespread
sandbox system for that context that hasn't had to constantly fight
leaks in its security. That includes Flash, Silverlight, ActiveX,
XPCOM, Java and every browser's implementation of JavaScript and
WebGL.

As for an algorithms class? Every environment I've worked in so far
has either offered or required basic knowledge of algorithms.
Certainly classes themselves aren't necessary for anyone interested in
honing their craft; just follow r/programming on reddit for a few
months and pick things up by osmosis. It doesn't take long to become
at least _aware_ of what the state of the art is (I mean that in its
semantic sense, not as an idiom), and you can pursue the details on an
as-needed basis.

-- 
:wq