Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!nrl-cmf!ames!amdahl!nsc!taux01!taux02!amos From: amos@taux02.UUCP (Amos Shapir) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Professional Programmers (was: Seeing the future) Message-ID: <321@taux02.UUCP> Date: 28 Nov 88 06:39:39 GMT References: <1984@eos.UUCP> <28200245@mcdurb> Organization: National Semiconductor (IC) Ltd, Israel Home of the 32532 Lines: 16 Hdate: 19 Kislev 5749 In article <28200245@mcdurb> aglew@mcdurb.Urbana.Gould.COM writes: >I am excited because a friend was parallelizing the previously >best known algorithm (...) and he was obtaining impressive >speedups (it's amazing what a difference a professional programmer >can make). Having seen some programs written by scientists, I am not at all amazed. Most of what a professional programmer does when helping scientists, is to change things like cos(atan(x))**2 to 1/(1+x*x) . The hardest part is convincing the scientists that it does make a difference. -- Amos Shapir amos@nsc.com National Semiconductor (Israel) P.O.B. 3007, Herzlia 46104, Israel Tel. +972 52 522261 TWX: 33691, fax: +972-52-558322 34 48 E / 32 10 N (My other cpu is a NS32532)