Okay, I think I'm brain damaged -- nope, I figured it out

[Roger Eller]

On Sep 14, 2013 12:55 PM, "Richard Gaskin" wrote:
>
> Roger Eller wrote:
>
> > I am fascinated by the benchmarking scripts you have devised, but
> > if the destinations are the same, why in the world would someone
> > purposefully choose the moped to get there, especially when the
> > jet plane is available?
>
> It's hard to find parking for a jet. :)
>

Doh!  I should have said jet pack.

> Mopeds, cars, trucks, and even bicycles have useful roles among
transportation options, each having its own strengths and weaknesses for a
given task.
>

Agreed.

>
> And sometimes we need to put before, and sometimes put after, and while
it's conceivable the engine might be able to figure out our intentions to
reverse the operation internally to use the faster form, no doubt there
would be cases where it would guess wrong.
>

But if there were an IDE feature which allowed the engine to use it's best
judgment with built-in timing feedback, it could help us choose.  Perhaps
an expert -vs- auto-pilot flag on repeat structures.

> There are likely many ways the engine can be further optimized for
ever-greater efficiency, just as Raney took the time so long ago to
optimize the "put after" so that it no longer made a copy but did a resize
instead.
>

I would love it if repeats had automatic built-in busy indicators for tasks
under 3 seconds, and would automatically display a progress bar (at a
specified screen location) for longer repeats.  It would also need to be
optional, and offer a granularity parameter to keep it from slowing down
the loop.

> But we can also expect there will always be a need for us to decide which
algorithm best fits the problem at hand.
>

Mostly always, with optional ai could prove to be useful, or at least I
think it could be.

>
> --
>  Richard Gaskin
>  Fourth World

~Roger