[MUD-Dev] TECH: programming languages (was: Re: TECH: STL / Heaps, etc.)

[Hans-Henrik Staerfeldt]

On Thu, 23 Aug 2001, Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:

>> This is exactly what makes high-level languages potentially fast:
>> the compiler can take your high-level specification, figure out
>> what it is that you're actually trying to do, and apply an
>> algorithm to solving it that is more efficient than anything you
>> could ever have come up with on your own, because it takes
>> advantage of years of research on a topic you may never have even
>> heard of.
 
> Potentially maybe.  Unfortunately, I can't even see how this could
> be generally achieved even in the most theoretical sense.

An example is database searches; here your SQL query is analyzed,
and the database search engine makes a number of strategies for
evaluationg your query. It will the try to select the fastest
strategy. Sure this does nothing for very trivial searches, like
getting all players named "John", but for more complex searches,
like getting the the top 10 items based on weight that is named
"Cup", it makes sense first to select the items named cup and then
sort them, rather than sorting all items and then select for cup. I
don't know about the 'designing an algorithm' part, as i don't see
anything alike 'agorithm design' here, but in some limited way it is
already being done.


Hans Henrik Stærfeldt   |    bombman at diku.dk    | work:  hhs at cbs.dtu.dk      |
Address:                |___  +45 40383492    __|__       +45 45252425     __|
DTU, Kemitorvet,        | Scientific programmer at Center for Biological     |
bygn 208, CBS.          |  Sequence Analysis, Technical University of Denmark|

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