On 6/1/07, J. Andrew Rogers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Using your unique perspective of the situation, it would seem that no new algorithms have been invented since Alan Turing showed up.
Not really. N log N sorting, hash tables, recursive descent parsing, fast Fourier transform, NDFAs, B-trees, wavelet compression, these were big things. But they were also by and large in the early years. Diminishing returns set in pretty fast. Yes, clever algorithms are discovered each year. But as time goes by, the _importance_ of a new clever algorithm versus a better implementation using already-known algorithms - the importance of computer science versus software engineering - declines dramatically. As I said, it is already at the point where the hard part is _mainly_ in engineering issues and hardly at all in algorithmic cleverness. I take it that you are a dabbler in computer science And I take it that you are an ivory-tower academic with little idea of what it takes to build useful software in the real world. Now that we've hopefully settled the question of who has the biggest dick, feel free to point to specifics where new algorithms have recently added substantial capability, or where as yet undiscovered algorithms would do so - would add capability in the real world, I mean, not just in the laboratory. ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=231415&user_secret=e9e40a7e
