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> "...let's say a 30-year veteran of COBOL..." That would be around the era of the Intel 80486 processor. All of us cared a hell of a lot about both algorithm
by ThrowawayR2 7y ago
> "...let's say a 30-year veteran of COBOL..."
That would be around the era of the Intel 80486 processor. All of us cared a hell of a lot about both algorithmic and data structure efficiency back then since computers were so feeble compared to today's systems; people who didn't couldn't produce programs that functioned properly.
- jasode 7y ago>the era of the Intel 80486 processor. All of us cared a hell of a lot about both algorithmic and data structure efficiency back then since computers were so feeble compared to today's systems; In the ancient 1990s, A COBOL programmer writing "green screen" terminal apps to hit a database on an IBM 360 mainframe doesn't deploy to 80486 desktop pcs. Even today, if you type "COBOL programmer" into monster.com to search for jobs, most of the results will be programming work for mainframe environments instead of targeting consumer computers like iOS/Android/Windows/macOS/etc.
- scarface74 7y agoIn the 90s, I wrote C and Fortran for DEC VAX and Stratus VOS mainframes. Even then our major concerns weren’t “algorithmic complexity” and being able to reverse a binary tree on the whiteboard.
- Nursie 7y agoYou don't need to reverse a binary tree on a whiteboard, but you should have some idea of the complexity of what you're writing, or you'll write crap. Even in a CRUD context.
- scarface74 7y agoA 486 was more than powerful enough to run most workloads at the time even in high level languages without too much optimization. Anyone who thinks a 486 was “feeble” didn’t spend time optimizing assembly on a 1Mhz 65C02 by doing as much zero page memory access as possible to save a clock cycle.