3 ms·
It seems to me that a huge amount of developer effort tends to be expended in mapping data between different data structures as required by different algorithms
by tgflynn 15y ago
It seems to me that a huge amount of developer effort tends to be expended in mapping data between different data structures as required by different algorithms or API's.
If a way could be found to automatically discover a set of feasible and approximately optimal data transforms to meet the requirements of the operations that need to be performed it seems like very large productivity gains might be obtained.
- gruseom 15y agoa huge amount of developer effort tends to be expended in mapping data between different data structures as required by different algorithms or API's This is indeed one of the biggest sources of complexity. A programmer I used to work with called it "meat grinding".
- mtraven 15y agoI call that "plumbing", since it's basically just getting different sizes and shapes of pipes to connect. But "meat grinding" is good too.
- gruseom 15y agoWhen I hear people say "plumbing" it seems to mean not data conversion but the internal workings of a system, especially anything infrastructurey. So "meat grinding" seems more specific. But I like it because it's appropriately disdainful. Who wants to grind meat all day? Dostoevsky said that if you want to drive a man insane all you need to do is sentence him to hard labor moving a pile of dirt from one side of a prison yard to another – and then back again.
- tptacek 15y agoFitting data in whatever form it has taken at point X in a program into the form that API Y expects is often more like meat ungrinding.