> -----Original Message----- > From: Herouth Maoz [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[snip] > Like that famous program from my military days, which was > always a nightmare. > They set it to run, and came back two days later for the > results. Then one of > the more clueful programmers (who didn't actually have a BSc > then) took a look > at it and discovered it was doing a bubble sort on its > database. He wrote it > with quicksort or something equally efficient. It changed to > running two hours > instead of two days. Heh, that's nothing! I had a programmer ask me to give him unlimited time on the mainframe. When asked he said he has to run a one-time program. I said Okay, but had him put checkpoint logs so we'll know the progress. After the first few checkpoints it was evident that two weeks (!) would not be enough. I asked for the source, and noticed an O(n**3) algorithm with a "large n". After analyzing the requirements I have taught him an O(n) in code + O(nlogn) in database preprocessing. Took less than an hour to run. Yes, it was in the army. Yes the above programer was a MAMRAM programming course graduate + 3 years of experience. and Yes the O(n) algorithm was Merge-Sort. -- Arik ********************************************************************** This email and attachments have been scanned for potential proprietary or sensitive information leakage. PortAuthority(TM) Server Keeping Information Inside Vidius, Inc. www.vidius.com ********************************************************************** ================================================================To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
