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I agree, you need mathematical insight too you can have that and still code as we do now without sacrificing a way to express solutions that consider things suc

by rixarn 8y ago

I agree, you need mathematical insight too you can have that and still code as we do now without sacrificing a way to express solutions that consider things such as cache locality. With what he proposes, that’s simply not possible. There’s a very interesting talk by scott meyers about how important cache locallity is to the point where, in practice, for some problems, big oh analysis breaks because of cache misses. So an algorithm that is faster by those standars gets its ass kicked by a “slower” one just because of cache misses.

thrmsforbfast 8y ago
> With what he proposes, that’s simply not possible There's nothing special about the cache hierarchy. It's just one more thing that can be reasoned about using mathematics. If you care about cache locality, you can write down the semantics of an optimizing compiler and prove that this compiler uses the cache hierarchy in an optimal way. Why would that be impossible? Not only is it possible, but it might even be easier in high-level languages. For example, the argument has even been made that the importance of cache locality is really an argument in favor of higher-level functional languages. But again, with respect to TLA+, this is all a red herring and completely misses the point. The more important point re: TLA+ is the GIGO/correctness problem. I don't give a damn how cache-efficient my algorithm is if it's not even computing the correct results!