On Sun, 27 Feb 2011, Robert Nesius wrote: > On Sun, Feb 27, 2011 at 3:08 AM, Mike Miller <mbmiller+l at gmail.com> wrote: > >> It isn't very efficient, though. It took 13 minutes on my machine. > > That's part of the fun of it. There are multiple twists you can add for > fun. > > 1) Choosing the best language for a particular problem. > > 2) Commit to solving in a particular language for the fun of overcoming the > challenges that presents (like bash, or lisp, or erlang, or asm, etc...) It's good exercise to push a language to do things it isn't good at. You pick up a lot of useful tricks. A lot of people would think programming couldn't be fun, but if crossword puzzles are fun, or sudoku is fun, then programming must be fun, but it's better than fun because you can solve important problems. Solving a sudoku or crossword puzzle can't help to discover a cure for cancer, but some computer programs do that. > 3) Finding a solution that is computationally more efficient. i.e., > O(N^2) solution is readily apparent. Might there be an O(N) or O(nlogn) > approach that exploits underlying properties? I was wondering about that for things like factoring and identifying prime numbers. It would be good to study more algorithms, but I don't have enough time to study them until I actually have a work-related problem to solve. For these problems I have to toss off one of the first things that comes into my head. It's a good feeling to get a quick answer, but I also feel like I opened a bag of chips and ate just one. Mike