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Torvalds version of rule 5: “Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships.” Brooks's version: "Sh
by jonahx 9y ago
Torvalds version of rule 5: “Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships.”
Brooks's version: "Show me your flowcharts and conceal your tables, and I shall continue to be mystified. Show me your tables, and I won’t usually need your flowcharts; they’ll be obvious."
- analog31 9y agoI wrote in Pascal for many years. Trust me, I can design data structures that will baffle the greatest scholars of the ages. ;-) I found one of my old codes, a few months ago, and I'm still trying to figure out what possessed me to write it.
- kornish 9y agoIs that better than the alternative, though, which is not designing data structures? Essential complexity [1] is still complexity. It has to exist somewhere; you just get to choose how to move it around. [1]: http://wiki.c2.com/?EssentialComplexity http://wiki.c2.com/?EssentialComplexity
- kazinator 9y agoUnfortunately, it is nonsense, in large part. Not all algorithms are obvious from a picture of the data structure, otherwise we wouldn't need computer science at all. No, you won't spontaneously invent a minimax search with alpha-beta pruning if you're just show the picture of the game tree with board positions. Some of the "low-hanging fruit" is obvious, but that's about it. In the other direction, some algorithms are abstract; the same structure will work for more than one data structure. Sometimes the process is important, not the low level representational pieces. E.g. "map reduce". Gee, don't show me "map reduce"; I need to see the servers and requests! No wait, I mean linked lists and atoms, ...