[gameprogrammer] Re: Blue Collar Coding

On Tue, May 11, 2004 at 10:09:23AM -0500, Bob Pendleton wrote:

> I didn't get the same things out of it that you did. I thought he was
> making a couple of different points. The first being that algorithmic
> optimization works better than low level optimization. This is something
> that has been shown to be true many times.

Agreed.

> The counter argument, and all the counter examples show that while
> algorithmic optimization works best it is hard to do in low level
> languages like C.

How exactly?  And in your opinion, is it still hard to do in C++?

Yes, low-level languages can be pain to work with since every small task
can take tens of lines of code.  However, exactly because they are
low-level (= support just a small (but hopefully orthogonal) set of
primitive concepts) they are well suited for expressing a wide range of
solutions.  It's up to the programmer to build a set of higher level
abstractions upon the primitives supplied by the language and then do
his algorithmic optimization in terms of those abstractions.

> The second point was that computers are now fast enough to allow the use
> of high level languages for problems that they were never considered for
> in the past because of performance concerns. Which makes algorithmic
> optimization easier to do.

Well, yes, the range of problems that can be solved with Python is much
wider than a couple of years ago, I gladly agree.  But this range by no
means includes all or even most problems, IMHO.  There's still a lot of
places that cannot tolerate anything interpreted.

Anyway, the difference between the lower level (C, C++) and higher level
(Python etc.) languages that matters the most to me is not about
performance (interpreted languages are getting faster and most of the
time, I don't need cutting edge performance anyway) nor is it about
their "high/low-levelness" (C++ is considered low level but you can
build your high-level abstractions into it very elegantly).  To me, what
matters the most is the difference between the static, compile-time
nature of C/C++ and the dynamic, run-time, introspective nature of
Python.  That's what has the most profound influence on design of the
software IMHO, at least in the realm of OOP.

> Anyway, that is what I thought he was saying.

I might be overreacting.  High-level, interpreted languages seem to be
all the rage now and some people seem to enjoy ramming them down
everyone's throat.  I mean, I'm glad to have Python and even if I'm far
from being a Python guru, I use it when appropriate.  But it's just
another tool in the toolbox, no new be all end all of programming.
Remember when OOP was the Next Big Thing?  The aggresive advocacy
alienated a lot of people, some of them haven't even recovered yet. ;)

        latimerius

P.S.  For us who don't know English very well, what is "Blue Collar
Coding" supposed to mean?  I have a clue about the blue/white collar
distinction but I'm not sure I understand, anyway.



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