Tapes for working data etc were the technology of the day. Archival, working and temp storage, even bringing in bits of programs (overlays) from tape was not that unusual. As hardware has gotten cheaper, we throw that at a problem rather than brain cells, and tell ourselves we are thinking at a 'higher level' just because we obfuscate the solution from the hardware and ourselves. For some problems it works. For others it doesn't and just gets in the way of thinking to a workable solution. ... ahh, but that is pontificating for another day. ...
Jason Orendorff wrote: > On Fri, Nov 14, 2008 at 6:38 PM, Jack Coats <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >>>> You should have seen it run a big balanced sort using the >>>> tape rives! >>>> >>> Those algorithms live on in Knuth. He claims they're still relevant, >>> something about memory access locality. I suspect that's pretty much >>> nonsense, but they're fun to think about. >>> >> Every once in a great while, the logic still come to bear. Doing >> topological sorts still has uses >> in determining what should come first if there are options in a directed >> tree. I have had to use >> it in some systems modeling applications. >> > > Well, yeah, topological sort is a workhorse. (Offhand, it turns up in > make and Mercurial. Both have DAGs.) Algorithms generally are > probably as important now as they ever have been. I just meant the > tape-sorting algorithms in TaoCP 5.4. > > I am probably wrong about those too. I need to reread. > > Cheers, > -j > > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "NLUG" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/nlug-talk?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
