[Proj] Re: NAD problems on OSX 10.5 Leopard

Ed McNierney ed at topozone.com
Fri Jan 18 05:03:51 PST 2008


Daan & Rich -

 

I think I'd want to remember that "premature optimization" really
reminds us to "make it work correctly, THEN make it work quickly"!  This
is related to the observation that any code can be made to execute
arbitrarily quickly as long as it is not required to produce the right
answer.

 

I have to say that whatever its origin, I picked up the phrase from my
friend and co-worker Bob Frankston (author of VisiCalc), who was (and
is) fond of pithy pronouncements.

 

-          Ed

 

From: proj-bounces at lists.maptools.org
[mailto:proj-bounces at lists.maptools.org] On Behalf Of strebe at aol.com
Sent: Friday, January 18, 2008 12:21 AM
To: proj at lists.maptools.org
Subject: [Proj] Re: NAD problems on OSX 10.5 Leopard

 

 

"Premature optimization" was probably coined by pioneering computer
scientist C.A.R. Hoare, who said, "Premature optimization is the root of
all evil." Sadly, this is often misunderstood to mean, "Engineering for
scalability is the root of all evil."

Regards,
-- daan Strebe

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Greenwood <richard.greenwood at gmail.com>
To: PROJ.4 and general Projections Discussions <proj at lists.maptools.org>
Sent: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 8:50 pm
Subject: Re: [Proj] NAD problems on OSX 10.5 Leopard

On Jan 17, 2008 8:28 PM, Ed McNierney <ed at topozone.com> wrote:




> Rich -




>




> The one thing that significantly surprised me was how well that code




> performed on low-end machines.  I think I released it in 2002 - maybe




> 2001 - and there were plenty of "slow" computers visiting TopoZone.  I




> realize it's just math (other than updating the status bar with the




> formatted coordinate text), but I was really expecting to see some
kind




> of lag if you waved the mouse quickly on a slow machine, but I never
saw




> the slightest delay.  I have found that I sometimes worry excessively




> about performance!




>




>         - Ed









I believe it was you who coined the term "premature optimization",




which always gets a chuckle when I use it. And I too have been amazed




at the performance of the JavaScript code I ported that does one or




more a projections (or unprojections) and a 7 parameter datum




transform for every pixel the user passes over. I kind of remember




computer science texts that discouraged us from using floating point




math if it could possibly be done with integers.









-- 




Richard Greenwood




richard.greenwood at gmail.com




www.greenwoodmap.com




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