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From: D Herring on 1 Aug 2010 23:17
On 08/01/2010 08:59 AM, Norbert_Paul wrote:
> Scott L. Burson wrote:
>> If you are using what Lisp offers, you are already optimizing
>> prematurely. Use FSet and you can pessimize prematurely instead :)
>>
>> Ha ha, just kidding :)
> I don't get the joke?
> (knowing the difference "optimize" vs. "pessimize").

I think he's saying "give up O(n) now for o(n log n), and never worry
about O(n^2)".

- Daniel
From: Scott L. Burson on 2 Aug 2010 02:20
Norbert_Paul wrote:
> Hi Scott,
> nice to meet you again.
>
> Scott L. Burson wrote:
>> If you are using what Lisp offers, you are already optimizing
>> prematurely. Use FSet and you can pessimize prematurely instead :)
>>
>> Ha ha, just kidding :)
> I don't get the joke?
> (knowing the difference "optimize" vs. "pessimize").

I'm poking fun at myself on behalf of all those people who automatically
think that functional collections must be too slow.

>> So what I'm suggesting is to use the FSet collections by default. They
>> are easy to use and packed with featureful goodness.
> OKAY, OKAY!
> I'll give them a try next week.
> :)

Cool :)

>> [...] But since this is just a linear-factor problem rather
>> than a time complexity problem, the change won't be so urgent. E.g., the
>> loop might run half as fast as you want for any size input, but it won't
>> blow up for large inputs.
> Good point. I don't care much for linear factors, either.

In the kind of code I work on, I hardly worry about them at all (within
reason, of course). If the algorithm is subquadratic, it's fast enough.

-- Scott
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