[Beowulf] A start in Parallel Programming?

[Joe Landman]

Robert G. Brown wrote:

>> Compilers are designed to compile code written by humans.
>> Autogenerated code typically does not optimize well.
> 
> Or be human-readable.  f2c code was just about as evil as any zomby
> woof or eskimo boy could be.  I used to try to use it to START porting
> fortran sources to C, but rapidly concluded that it was actually easier

Heh... I had to use f2c early on for some MD programs in grad school.
Machine we were running on only had licenses for C compilers, no
fortran.  So, f2c, run, find problem, work our way back to the offending
source line in f2c, then back to .F

Ugh.

As for human readability, well, even humans can generate some fairly
unreadable code.

Some do it on purpose (http://codegolf.com/
http://perlgolf.sourceforge.net/ and a few others) for fun and games.

Some do it because they don't know any better.  Some do it because they
are trying to be helpful.  Or leverage something they just read about,
but really don't yet grasp ...

Joe

ps disclosure: FWIW I do play the occasional Perl golf.  Last one I
played with was to write a roman numeral calculator (c.f.
http://www.fonality.com/golf/ and
http://www.fonality.com/golf/post_mortem.cgi?id=1).



-- 
Joseph Landman, Ph.D
Founder and CEO
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