I love reading about this optimization. It's cool to look back and see all of the tricks people used to get their games/apps/software to run fast back when processors were much slower and memory was limited.
Reading this made me think of how I felt when I first read up on Booth's Algorithm for doing bitwise multiplication. I just can't wrap my head around how you'd begin to come up with stuff like this.
Well it does say that he developed it as a way to use the desk calculators faster, rather than actually in the study of crystals. Probably just came up with the algorithm to save some time doing tedious calculations.
Everyone should be aware of this. Its both a wonderful gem and a warning of how dangerously weird programming can be. I should submit the story of Mel. Its another classic
7 comments
3 u/a_of_s_t 07 Jul 2015 20:30
I love reading about this optimization. It's cool to look back and see all of the tricks people used to get their games/apps/software to run fast back when processors were much slower and memory was limited.
1 u/Monqui 07 Jul 2015 21:14
Reading this made me think of how I felt when I first read up on Booth's Algorithm for doing bitwise multiplication. I just can't wrap my head around how you'd begin to come up with stuff like this.
1 u/Shammah 08 Jul 2015 15:03
Because it's totally obvious that you'd need such algorithm when studying the structure of crystals :|
0 u/Vorthas 08 Jul 2015 18:57
Well it does say that he developed it as a way to use the desk calculators faster, rather than actually in the study of crystals. Probably just came up with the algorithm to save some time doing tedious calculations.
2 u/noah_healy 08 Jul 2015 23:51
Everyone should be aware of this. Its both a wonderful gem and a warning of how dangerously weird programming can be. I should submit the story of Mel. Its another classic
2 u/primis [OP] 09 Jul 2015 04:40
If you're gonna submit mel, I should submit real programmers dont use pascal!
0 u/noah_healy 09 Jul 2015 05:32
That one's hilarious