4 ms·
2x the compute resources is still horrible for our environment, which isn't pretty good to me. Computer Scientists/Software Engineers need to get it into their
by chris_mc 8y ago
2x the compute resources is still horrible for our environment, which isn't pretty good to me. Computer Scientists/Software Engineers need to get it into their head that wasting compute resources is directly increasing our footprint on this planet. We need to simplify the web not because of bandwidth use, but because all that compute resource moving around useless ads and scripts is largely a waste. We need to stop using block-chain for everything where a centralized ledger would suffice because block-chain is literally wasting resources in those problems for no reason. We need to start thinking about our software's impact on the environment due to wasted compute cycles for things that are unnecessary or which could be improved by reducing the cycles needed and stop doing that lazy or fancy stuff.
- jpatokal 8y agoIf you read the comments, you'll see that the "wasteful" method is actually the cheapest computationally.
- chris_mc 8y agoI'm responding to the general lack of concern by the commenter above and most engineers I know. You and this other guy commenting are missing the point, I'm not talking specifically about this algorithm, but about engineers in general who don't care about wasted cycles.
- tomc1985 8y agoYes but that's the entire point of these comments, wasting cycles is a great optimization but unless the goal is purely intellectual exercise, you lose more time with expensive trig functions. The real world favors the naive approach, in this context + case.
- nicky0 8y agoEvery cycle is sacred.
- laurentl 8y agoIf a cycle is wasted, Knuth gets quite irate Tangentially, I believe the topic of generating random points inside the unit ball is covered in vol 2 of TAOCP, with all the math you could wish for to justify the different methods.
- bonzini 8y ago2x compared to a simpler problem, not compared to the optimum.