[plug] Web database stuff - Bollocks

[Mike]

At 02:50 PM 24/8/2001 +0800, you wrote:
>On Fri, 24 Aug 2001, Mike wrote:
>
>> >There are cliches about not using flowcharts? I wasn't even aware that it
>> >was something that gets discussed - I presumed every Real Programmer
>> >independently discovered the futility of flow-charts for themself.
>
>> You have the opinion (it seems) that flow-charts are futile.
>> I am saying it all depends on the task at hand.
>
>Interesting to hear that opinions still differ. If I had to use assembly,
>I'd probably use some pseudocode, rather than flowchart, to map the
>procedures. With a high-level language, the program IS the flowchart.

mmm Perhaps, though normal 80/132 char wide top down read text does
not seem as pictorial by any means than 2 dimensional conceptual
blocks and the tapestry of interconnections where patterns are far
easier to recognise. Actually thats one good thing in favour of
2d flowcharts - exploits more the brains ability to recognise
patterns. Block structure diagrams and tangential developments
thereof could well be better expressed in tech courses for that
very reason,

The great thing about 2d flowcharts comes into its own when any major
attempt to optimisation is attempted - as Brad mentioned earlier (and
I agree) a flowchart with precise annotations is a great pre-requisite
to serious time or space optimisations - depending on your inclination
- and can make the difference in a commercial decision in respect of
low-end real cheap micros to handle reasonable complex bit shuffling
under time constraints...

Conversely we are getting to the stage where serious computing power
is so damn cheap that a few hundred cycles here or there don't matter
that much - rather spend the money on an ASIC then torturing oneself
over some micro code trying to save a few machine cycles, ie Where
ASIC random logic can be integrated with a processor core for the
best of both worlds - added benefit is the protection ( to some
degree) against easy copying,

> I guess some people prefer a more visual approach, but I personally have
>never seen the benefit.

Until you do it - at the coal face - so to speak then I too would
have been ambivalent,

>  Procedual code is in a sense linear, and top down. Its well represented
>by high-level (pseudo)code.

The easiest to read and fastest to program top-down code is by no
means space-optimum though it may be time-optimum,

Rgds

Mike