I'd say that it is definitely worthwhile to have an understanding of how algorithms work. Programmers should have a rough understanding of whether the way they are tackling a problem is O(n) or O(n^2) for instance. Is it better to solve a problem iteratively or recursively? You probably won't need to write your own sorting algorithm in CF, this is true, but understanding the major approaches to problems and what the trade offs are is probably a useful thing.
And there are times when the sorts of issues that are addressed in an algorithms course has absolutely been on my plate as a programmer. For instance, what is the best way to store an arbitrary depth message board sort of structure in a database table? Do you pre-sort it and rearrange everything when you do a new insert because inserts happen rarely? Do you call a recursive function to build a tree starting with an arbitrary 0-depth marker and then go through until every record in the table has been visited and stored in memory? There are lots of options out there and they have real-world impact on the performance and complexity of your application. Cheers, Judah On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 3:12 PM, Justin Scott <[email protected]> wrote: > >> The topics on that page won't be obviously >> beneficial to most ColdFusion programmers. > > I agree, with a note that these topics appear to be lower-level in nature > than CF programmers have to deal with. CF is essentially an abstraction of > Java at this point, which itself is a high-level language which requires > runtime environments to function. It's always nice to have some > foundational knowledge of how things like sorting and hashing are carried > out way down in the deep levels of the system, but for the most part a CF > developer has no need for that level of detailed knowledge to get through > the day. > > > -Justin > > > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Order the Adobe Coldfusion Anthology now! http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Coldfusion-Anthology-Michael-Dinowitz/dp/1430272155/?tag=houseoffusion Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/message.cfm/messageid:337842 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/unsubscribe.cfm
