Re: Punch cards

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On Mon, 07 Apr 2008 08:26:35 -0700
Les <hlhowell@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> On Sun, 2008-04-06 at 18:51 -0500, John Thompson wrote:
> > On 2008-04-04, Robert Rabinoff <rar113@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > 
> > > When I first learned to program in 1964 we used an IBM 1620, fondly known
> > > as CADET (Can't Add, Doesn't Even Try). 
>
> One of my favorite books was Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs.
> Don't remember who wrote it, and I'm sure it is somewhat archaic right
> now, but the lessons about how you structure the data impacting the
> speed and efficiency of a program were precious to me.
> 
> When I learned to create double-linked chains for data structures, I was
> able to create new and novel programming techniques, and coupled with a
> good round of lessons on sorting (bubble, double bubble, hash tables,
> quick sort and insertion sort ) along with some illustrations of speed
> of sort vs data table size, and how to utilize one for one type of data
> and another for different data entry, I gained great insight.
> 
> Another algorithm that I love, but don't yet fully understand is the
> PRML algorithm.  I think it has lots of applications if one can
> structure the data as a net.
> 
> Optimal path algorithms are also worthy of some additional study.
> 
> And if you are doing image processing some 2d Fourier Transforms, and
> some efforts with Gaussian filters is great.  If you do not know what
> these are, please look them up.  Some of the new pattern recognition
> stuff is pretty neat, too, but I am not as conversant with them as with
> the others.  Line following algorithms, and other algorithms to help
> separate images from each other are great, too.
> 
> Some of the newer speech recognition algorithms are so proprietary you
> cannot see their underlying algorithms, but this is an area worthy of
> greater study as well.
> 
> Distributed computing is neat, and I am interested in its operation,
> scheduling, flagging data, and separating algorithms are also areas of
> interest.  I still have a book on CAPP architectures here somewhere.  I
> think that the 80386(tm) processor had some special registers to enable
> CAPP operations on a hardware level, but I believe they were dropped
> with the 80486(tm) and later processors.
> 
> You can read libraries of books to learn about what is out there, but
> coding and getting a few dozen good algorithms to work that apply to the
> 80% job of your desired work will take you a long way to being one of
> the top guys.  Then learning how to find and implement new algorithms
> will take you the rest of the way, in my experience.
> 
> And for all the emphasis on Object programming, either OO which only
> works at compile time, or realtime objects, without ultimately having
> good underlying algorithms, the programs are just poor examples of how
> to confuse the person reading or working on your code.  Comments are
> necessary, and for objects documentation about the object, its data
> structures, and the available algorithms is important to make them
> really portable and useful.  
> 
> Repeat after me:  Self documenting code is an oxymoron.
> 
> And even if you are a wizbang programmer, if your code is too obtuse
> (and I have written my share of obtuse programs), if the next guy cannot
> understand it, or what it actually does, it is not effective in the real
> world.
> 
> Regards,
> Les H
> 

Bible author: Niklaus Wirth from ETH Zuerich, father of Pascal and
Oberon.

Best regards, Bob

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