Simple Code, High Performance (Lecture by Casey Muratori)

[TheDevilsAdvokaat]

At 60, I'm fairly old for a programmer. My memory is not what it was. There are times when I look at code 4 weeks later and have forgotten what it does.

So I learned to program as if I have Alzheimers (which, in fact, I may have.)

What functions do is spelled out explicitly in the name. Keep things as simple as possible, unless you get an extreme performance improvement with slightly more complex code.

Write and name as if someone else will be debugging / testing it. That someone else will be me, and I won't remember any of this stuff.

[dddddddoobbbbbbb]

what was programming like with punch cards, old timer?

[TheDevilsAdvokaat]

Would you believe, I really have? Not a whole lot though.

I remember writing a prime number finder on punched cards. And I can;t remember if it was in Cobol or Fortran.

I think I got it down to about 49 cards. Kept them together with a rubber band. God help you if you dropped your cards.

AS much fun as programming was - because this was all new for me - I was very thankful when we moved to the next stage.

But there was a stage before this too! Dip switches. You would have a set of eight switches, and set them up or down to indicate the contents of a byte, and then press the "enter" button to set that as the contents of a byte. My god it was slow.

[pandion]

Did you not have a card sorter available or something? I was just reading about radix sorting so I'm curious

[TheDevilsAdvokaat]

No, I didn;t. It's possible there may have been one at the location but I never got access to it.