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Old-school programming techniques you probably don't miss

computerworld.com

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Re: Old-school programming techniques you probably don't miss

#2

Post by javanix »

I think most CS degrees still do (and should) require the algorithms and data structures programming.

They are useful skills, and, I think the reason that the section seems "old-school" comes from the proliferation of Java in early CS courses.

Java has most of the algorithms and structures implemented already, and there's no point in anyone redoing it once they find those implementations, so the skills fall out of use.

Re: Old-school programming techniques you probably don't miss

#5

Post by bcl »

Some of these techniques are still very useful. For example when developing for embedded systems you don't have the luxury of infinite cpu cycles and ram, you need to understand the algorithms you are using, implement your own, and be able to optimize for performance.

Another way to look at it is this -- how can having more knowledge, more tools in your toolbox, hurt?

Re: Old-school programming techniques you probably don't miss

#7

Post by biohacker42 »

What the hell kinda crap is that article. You don't need to know sorting algorithms?

You may never write one to use in a production environment, but you better damn well understand them and then some.

And no need for memory management? I don't care if you're coding in a garbage collected language you STILL better understand how computer memory works.

This article is literally below coding horror standards.

Re: Old-school programming techniques you probably don't miss

#8

Post by gaius »

javanix wrote: post #2

I think most CS degrees still do (and should) require the algorithms and data structures programming. They are useful skills, and, I think the reason that the section seems "old-school" comes from the proliferation of Java in early CS courses. Java has most of the algorithms and structures implemented already, and there's no point in anyone redoing it once they find those implementations, so the skills fall out of us…

The point of teaching sorting isn't to teach sorting but to teach big-O notation and how to understand complexity. That will never be obsolete.

Re: Old-school programming techniques you probably don't miss

#9

Post by gaius »

This kinda misses the point of Hungarian. I don't care that two variables are both floats, the compiler will keep track of types for me. I do care very much that I'm not trying to add a width to a height, for example. Hungarian can help with that in languages like C and Python.
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