in reply to Re^2: Mathematics eq CompSci
in thread Mathematics eq CompSci

Hmmm. Let's see software that deals with external devices and events:

Browsers, compilers, operating systems, databases, communications systems, radar system, weapons systems, guidance systems, mp3 sofware, windtunnel software, engine management systems, video games, avionics, disk/tape/display/CD/DVD/USB/Printer/Network card/etc. device drivers, camera software, picture editing software, spreadsheets, editors, interpreters, Genome analysis, web servers, ftp, network OS, viruses, trojans, XML, stock control, calculators, phone software, microwaves, washing machines, accounting software, central heating controllers, tills, atms, petrol pumps, clocks, satellites ....

Although I've heard rumors of old fogies using C and Fortran and running compute intensive simulations for hours and days and months. But its just a rumor, so you can safely discount it.

Counterpoint?

Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.
Lingua non convalesco, consenesco et abolesco. -- Rule 1 has a caveat! -- Who broke the cabal?
"Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".
The "good enough" maybe good enough for the now, and perfection maybe unobtainable, but that should not preclude us from striving for perfection, when time, circumstance or desire allow.

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Re^4: Mathematics eq CompSci
by Anonymous Monk on Jun 22, 2005 at 18:40 UTC
    Hmmm. I was thinking of people who use computer to actually, you know, compute things. People like mathematicians, scientists, engineers, etc., working on problems like circuit analysis, 3D electromagnetic field solvers, place and route algorithms, fluid dynamics, cryptography, signal processing, image/voice recoginition, theorem provers, natural language processing, program analysis, structural analysis, expert system (chess playing, credit risk analysis, ...), vehicle routing, drug chemistry, particle physics simulations, seismic modeling, weather prediction...
[reply]

      And all of those applications, without exception, require data be input from disk or tape or keyboard or mouse or network devices, and results be output to disk, tape or screen devices.

      And for many (most?) of those applications, the only way to process the vast volumes of data involved, is to spread the load across multiple processors. In order for that to happen, those processors need to talk to each other.

      Heck, even on a single processor machine, the cpu has to talk to the RAM, and to the processor, RAM is just another external device driven by IO lines. It may be concealed by vitualised memory, but there is real memory (chip devices) and real interupts underlying that abstraction. Every program uses IO in some form.

      Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.
      Lingua non convalesco, consenesco et abolesco. -- Rule 1 has a caveat! -- Who broke the cabal?
      "Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".
      The "good enough" maybe good enough for the now, and perfection maybe unobtainable, but that should not preclude us from striving for perfection, when time, circumstance or desire allow.
[reply]
        Most real-world code is dominated by interactions with external events. User inputs, shared devices and databases, chaotic networks and the omnipresent contention for cpu and other resources. Whilst we all benefit from highly tuned sorts and tree-traversal algorithms when we need them, the benefits derived from their tuning, in the reality of our tasks spending 50%, 70% or even 90% of their time task-swapped or waiting on IO, is usually much less than those ascribed to them via intensive studies performed under idealised conditions.
        And exactly how again does this support the notion that algorthimic analysis is mostly a waste of time? Maybe you're making the conjecture that P==EXP, since all problems are dominated by I/O? Please do the world a favor and share with us how you solve the traveling salesman problem in linear time (Just for us idealized theorists, please assume that the I/O takes a vanishingly small amount of time).
[reply]

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