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From: Eric Sosman <esosman@ieee-dot-org.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.programmer
Subject: Re: Getter performance
Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2011 22:12:15 -0400
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On 10/21/2011 5:27 PM, Roedy Green wrote:
>[...]
> Knuth has frightened people from even investigating speed out of
> curiosity.

     Oh, yeah, right.  As in "Ri-i-i-i-ght."

     That's why he didn't write three entire volumes of TAOCP (and
more in the works) in an effort to reach beyond O() notation to the
constant factors that lie behind.  That's why he didn't devote a
whole lot of text and a whole lot of subtle mathematics to winkling
out differences between O(n log n) Quicksort and O(n log n) Mergesort
and O(n log n) Heapsort and O(n log n(?)) Shellsort.  That's why he
never explored threaded trees (they improve some operations by a
factor of only O(log n) so who cares?).  That's why he never bothered
with Marsaglia's rectangle-wedge-tail method for generating normally-
distributed random numbers; it's just a trifling micro-optimization.

     Oh, sorry, wait: By "frightened" you don't mean "dissuaded," but
literally "scared."  Well, I confess that some of Knuth's math goes
over my head.  But I feel at the same time that someone who shrinks
from even trying to understand it does not merit the title of
"engineer."

-- 
Eric Sosman
esosman@ieee-dot-org.invalid