Path: news.daimi.aau.dk!news.uni-c.dk!sunic!sunic.sunet.se!news.luth.se!eru.mt.luth.se!news.kth.se!nac.no!Norway.EU.net!EU.net!Germany.EU.net!Dortmund.Germany.EU.net!Informatik.Uni-Dortmund.DE!news From: grossjoh@groucho.informatik.uni-dortmund.de (Kai Grossjohann) Newsgroups: comp.lang.beta Subject: Re: BETA questions Date: 28 Apr 1995 14:50:31 +0200 Organization: University of Dortmund, Germany Lines: 44 Message-ID: References: <3jq90s$ojp@belfort.daimi.aau.dk> <3jqf0a$2on@netnews.upenn.edu> <3k3pgr$cub@fbi-news.informatik.uni-dortmund.de> <3n5foo$m2i@fbi-news.informatik.uni-dortmund.de> Reply-To: Kai Grossjohann NNTP-Posting-Host: groucho.informatik.uni-dortmund.de In-reply-to: nowias00@marvin.informatik.uni-dortmund.de's message of 20 Apr 1995 11:15:36 GMT To: nowias00@marvin.informatik.uni-dortmund.de (Mark Nowiasz) X-Newsreader: (ding) Gnus v0.60 >>>>> "Mark" == Mark Nowiasz >>>>> writes: Mark> IMHO may this kind attitude be responsible for large and Mark> inefficient programs and operating systems (like Windows >:-> Mark> ). Hm. Yes. Of course, one would want to optimize the portions of code that are a bottleneck. Mark> Besides, if effiency considerations are considered to be less Mark> important, why are there so many books and lectures about Mark> efficient algorithms ? It's a whole lot different to change an O(n^2) algorithm to an O(n * log(n)) algorithm than to increase the speed of a program by ten percent! AFAIK, the field of efficient algorithms is concerned mostly with creating algorithms that are faster w.r.t. O-notation rather than w.r.t. wall-clock time. Exceptions confirm the rule... Mark> These days, where GUIs are very complex and user-friendly, Mark> most of the program's code is dealing with the user's input / Mark> output and takes often quite a lot of time (in extreme cases Mark> most of the time ) (i.e. redrawing / refreshing / resizing Mark> windows resp. window's contents), so for most non-trivial Mark> problems efficiency considerations have to be taken. For the _programs_? I gather that most programs are written using a GUI library with rather high-level functions: - draw a text window; - have the user type something in it and read the result; Any GUI library with self-esteem would be likely to contain rather high-level functions so that only the library would needed to be optimized. Mark> It's not very pleasant for an user to wait several seconds Mark> before a window is build or refreshed. Yep. \kai{} -- Life is hard and then you die.