SJS wrote:
begin quoting Tracy R Reed as of Wed, Jan 16, 2008 at 09:56:55AM -0800:
Yeah, this is true. Some day people will be required to take a history
of computing class because just like the history of nations and
societies "those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it".
I think we should start now. There are people who honestly think (or
maybe they're just very good at winding me up) that MS "invented" the
concept of an operating system. . .
So, in my intro to CS class (for CS majors), they had a lecture near the
beginning of the semester that talked about big-O notation, and part of
what they showed was how slow algorithms performed on faster
hardware/runtimes vs. fast algorithms on slow hardware/runtimes. They
showed how for small values of n, the hardware of course prevailed, but
as n grew it got so even the fastest possible system would perform like
a dog if it used an inefficient algorithm. One of the machines cited in
the example was a top of the line Cray computer (at the time). This
student beside me says, "What's a Cray?" Now, it's *intro* to CS, and
people have different backgrounds coming out of high school, so I wasn't
too taken aback by the question. I explained what a Cray was, concluding
somewhere along the lines of: "for a lot of problems it is the fastest
thing out there... but really expensive". His response to this statement
left me flabbergasted: "...even faster than a 486?"
--Chris
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