IWETHEY v. 0.3.0 | TODO
1,095 registered users | 0 active users | 0 LpH | Statistics
Login | Create New User
IWETHEY Banner

Welcome to IWETHEY!

New Alan Perlis has a great quote on typing systems
It is better to have 100 functions operate on one data structure than 10 functions on 10 data structures.

For other quotes of his, see [link|http://www.cs.umd.edu/users/acha/epigrams.html|here].

Cheers,
Ben
"good ideas and bad code build communities, the other three combinations do not"
- [link|http://archives.real-time.com/pipermail/cocoon-devel/2000-October/003023.html|Stefano Mazzocchi]
New perhaps waaay out of my depth but WTF
It is better to have 100 functions operate on one data structure than 10 functions on 10 data structures.

It is better in my mind to have 10 threads striping ten data structures than a slow monolith.
key:name:address name.address
key:course course
key:location:instructor loc.instruct
query where do I show up for class
thanx,
bill


will work for cash and other incentives [link|http://home.tampabay.rr.com/boxley/resume/Resume.html|skill set]

questions, help? [link|mailto:pappas@catholic.org|email pappas at catholic.org]</br>

"If you want to meet a group of people who have a profound distrust of, and hostility toward, our legal system, don't waste your time on political radicals; interview a random selection of crime victims, and you will probably find that they make the former group look like utopian idealists by comparison." Dave Robicheaux
New Don't forget
Mostly not written for threading systems; most unices don't thread, and the ones that do suck at it.

Also, while it might be better from a raw machine performance standpoint, from a programmer productivity standpoint it's a lot better to have all the functions work similarly on similar things. In the past, cycles were more expensive than labour, but that's not been true for a long time now.
--\n-------------------------------------------------------------------\n* Jack Troughton                            jake at consultron.ca *\n* [link|http://consultron.ca|http://consultron.ca]                   [link|irc://irc.ecomstation.ca|irc://irc.ecomstation.ca] *\n* Kingston Ontario Canada               [link|news://news.consultron.ca|news://news.consultron.ca] *\n-------------------------------------------------------------------
New example probably useless
get a database with infinite fields encompassing every known factoid ever with a sql statement defining infinate fields as compared to databases limited in fields to specific detail.
Which will run faster, a query based on small subsets of small tables assembled for a unified report or a search that includes all records everywhere with substrings.
thamx
bill
will work for cash and other incentives [link|http://home.tampabay.rr.com/boxley/resume/Resume.html|skill set]

questions, help? [link|mailto:pappas@catholic.org|email pappas at catholic.org]</br>

"If you want to meet a group of people who have a profound distrust of, and hostility toward, our legal system, don't waste your time on political radicals; interview a random selection of crime victims, and you will probably find that they make the former group look like utopian idealists by comparison." Dave Robicheaux
New "better" refers to programming flexibility
Computers are fast enough that for most things, micro-optimization is simply not needed. In which case what you optimize is programmer time and flexibility. And Alan's claim is that that is optimized by having many small functions that you can put together in flexible ways.

While Alan was talking about Lisp versus Pascal, you can see the same principle at work in the Unix toolset. The Unix toolset has many small tools (cat, diff, sort, grep, ...) for dealing with text that can be put together flexibly. What you can do with this is far more flexible and powerful than having many different kinds of data, each of which you can only use specific functions on.

Which is the problem that [link|/forums/render/user?username=admin|admin] complains about with IDEs that keep all of the code in a disk image. Before long you want to do all of the things that you are used to using the file-based Unix toolset for, and you can't because the datatype is wrong. So now you have to reinvent and relearn the toolset, which is a lot of work just to get where you already were.

Many small tools that can be put together in unanticipated ways beats having to reinvent the wheel for each datatype. (Until, that is, the deficiencies of your datatype rears its ugly head. For instance how many shell scripts break when encountering files with returns within the name of the file?)

Cheers,
Ben
"good ideas and bad code build communities, the other three combinations do not"
- [link|http://archives.real-time.com/pipermail/cocoon-devel/2000-October/003023.html|Stefano Mazzocchi]
     Typing about typing - (Ovid) - (17)
         Re: Typing about typing - (deSitter) - (3)
             Re: Typing about typing - (Ovid) - (1)
                 Re: Typing about typing - (deSitter)
             Re: Typing about typing - (jake123)
         Random comments. - (admin)
         Alan Perlis has a great quote on typing systems - (ben_tilly) - (4)
             perhaps waaay out of my depth but WTF - (boxley) - (3)
                 Don't forget - (jake123) - (1)
                     example probably useless - (boxley)
                 "better" refers to programming flexibility - (ben_tilly)
         ICLRPD - (drewk) - (6)
             Re: ICLRPD - (Ovid) - (5)
                 I see an LRPDism. - (admin)
                 See that red starburst looking thing next to new posts? - (drewk) - (3)
                     ObSoWriteOneThen: - (admin) - (2)
                         I believe that's a sign of obsession - (drewk) - (1)
                             Oh... NOOO... ObLPRD: Inside!!! - (folkert)

So, what are we going to do tonight, Brain?
186 ms