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This seems to be quoting from https://softpanorama.org/People/Knuth/index.shtml https://softpanorama.org/People/Knuth/index.shtml > When I was at Stanford with

by kepano 2y ago

This seems to be quoting from https://softpanorama.org/People/Knuth/index.shtml https://softpanorama.org/People/Knuth/index.shtml > When I was at Stanford with the AI project [in the late 1960s] one of the things we used to do every Thanksgiving is have a computer programming contest with people on research projects in the Bay area. The prize I think was a turkey. > [John] McCarthy used to make up the problems. The one year that Knuth entered this, he won both the fastest time getting the program running and he also won the fastest execution of the algorithm. He did it on the worst system with remote batch called the Wilbur system. And he basically beat the shit out of everyone. > And they asked him, "How could you possibly do this?" And he answered, > "When I learned to program, you were lucky if you got five minutes with the machine a day. If you wanted to get the program going, it just had to be written right. So people just learned to program like it was carving stone. You sort of have to sidle up to it. That's how I learned to program."

ethbr1 2y ago
I heard a similar story from a professor who was doing his graduate work in mainframe days. (Paraphrasing) 'When you learn to program on punch card with batch jobs, you get really good at writing it correct the first time. Because if you write it wrong, it's (a) overnight processing to find out, (b) another day to fix it, (c) another overnight to get the updated results.'
magicalhippo 2y ago
I learned to program using Turbo Pascal and kept going with Delphi. I then had a 10 year break doing mainly C++. Having compile times suddenly go up 10-100x I found myself being much more careful before compiling. Don't think I spent that much more time, just an extra pass looking things over, making sure I wasn't doing something obviously wrong etc. Hard to maintain that discipline now that I'm back to "instant" compilation, for some reason.
- wenc 2y ago
  On one hand, high compile times make you think about your code more deeply. No one will dispute that this is a good discipline. On the other hand, computers can check so many more cases more quickly and more correctly. I think there's a point at which you say, "I'm going to get better results by letting the machine do the work."

by kepano 2y ago

ethbr1 2y ago

I heard a similar story from a professor who was doing his graduate work in mainframe days. (Paraphrasing) 'When you learn to program on punch card with batch jobs, you get really good at writing it correct the first time. Because if you write it wrong, it's (a) overnight processing to find out, (b) another day to fix it, (c) another overnight to get the updated results.'

magicalhippo 2y ago

I learned to program using Turbo Pascal and kept going with Delphi. I then had a 10 year break doing mainly C++. Having compile times suddenly go up 10-100x I found myself being much more careful before compiling. Don't think I spent that much more time, just an extra pass looking things over, making sure I wasn't doing something obviously wrong etc. Hard to maintain that discipline now that I'm back to "instant" compilation, for some reason.

wenc 2y ago
On one hand, high compile times make you think about your code more deeply. No one will dispute that this is a good discipline. On the other hand, computers can check so many more cases more quickly and more correctly. I think there's a point at which you say, "I'm going to get better results by letting the machine do the work."