Anti-Bloatware competition
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This article[^] got me thinking about something that is dear to my heart: the loss of the art of staying lean and mean. I'd like to run a fun competition to see who can write the leanest, meanest, most efficient (power, memory, cycles - you name it) solution to a standard problem. Any suggestions on what that problem should be? - travelling salesman - towers of hanoi - soduko solver - sorting / filtering - comparing large lists - ...?
cheers, Chris Maunder The Code Project Co-founder Microsoft C++ MVP
A couple of years after Pentiums came out, I was still testing all my code on an old 486 with bugger-all memory. That made a lot of users happy. Games developers should be forced to do the same thing.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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This article[^] got me thinking about something that is dear to my heart: the loss of the art of staying lean and mean. I'd like to run a fun competition to see who can write the leanest, meanest, most efficient (power, memory, cycles - you name it) solution to a standard problem. Any suggestions on what that problem should be? - travelling salesman - towers of hanoi - soduko solver - sorting / filtering - comparing large lists - ...?
cheers, Chris Maunder The Code Project Co-founder Microsoft C++ MVP
It's a great idea! I'd probably vote Travelling Salesman or Comparing Large Lists. The latter sounds particularly suited for memory & computing power optimization. :) We should also set some basic rules. For example, only the core algorithm would count for comparison between solutions, while input data loading, results printout, etc. would not. I would think .NET, Java and dynamic languages should be banned from such a competition... there's no way they could win against C/C++, asm etc. int terms of memory usage and performance.
2+2=5 for very large amounts of 2 (always loved that one hehe!)
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Chris Maunder wrote:
Any suggestions on what that problem should be? - travelling salesman - towers of hanoi - soduko solver - sorting / filtering - comparing large lists - ...?
Or image processing, like maybe flood fill[^]? </shameless-plug> :-\ :-O Seriously, that sounds like a great idea! We aren't anywhere close to achieving the best use of the memory and processing power available to us, because most people don't make it a priority anymore.
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I don't think I'd take on anything that difficult/involved just for fun; how about: Sieve of Eratosthenes Levenstein Distance
PIEBALDconsult wrote:
Sieve of Eratosthenes
Mmm. That must be lingering around somewhere. :)
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A couple of years after Pentiums came out, I was still testing all my code on an old 486 with bugger-all memory. That made a lot of users happy. Games developers should be forced to do the same thing.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
I still use 3 pentium 200 Mhz machines on a daily basis for the system I maintain. Also an old AMD K62 that is still hanging in there. The rest of the system has been upgraded to P4's :-D
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I still use 3 pentium 200 Mhz machines on a daily basis for the system I maintain. Also an old AMD K62 that is still hanging in there. The rest of the system has been upgraded to P4's :-D
P4s!!! Wow! You can use TONS of memory with the average P4 system!
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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P4s!!! Wow! You can use TONS of memory with the average P4 system!
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
:laugh: Just checked one of my test work stations... 50meg still free of 64meg available. Still room for expansion!
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:laugh: Just checked one of my test work stations... 50meg still free of 64meg available. Still room for expansion!
You could try the Adobe standard, of loading every font on the system into memory independently for each Adobe app that's running. Or have Day of the Tentacle and DooM running in the background.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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This article[^] got me thinking about something that is dear to my heart: the loss of the art of staying lean and mean. I'd like to run a fun competition to see who can write the leanest, meanest, most efficient (power, memory, cycles - you name it) solution to a standard problem. Any suggestions on what that problem should be? - travelling salesman - towers of hanoi - soduko solver - sorting / filtering - comparing large lists - ...?
cheers, Chris Maunder The Code Project Co-founder Microsoft C++ MVP
Language is kind of key here. And a lot of "lean and mean"-ness comes from linking correctly. To get rid of stuff in the C runtime library you don't need (want). Hello world is really pretty huge with a default c++ build. c# brings in tons of code at runtime that you didn't write, but the .exe can be teeny. In asm, it's not a lot bigger than the size of the string. So I'm hoping that describing your custom build will be part of the entry :) ...Steve
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This article[^] got me thinking about something that is dear to my heart: the loss of the art of staying lean and mean. I'd like to run a fun competition to see who can write the leanest, meanest, most efficient (power, memory, cycles - you name it) solution to a standard problem. Any suggestions on what that problem should be? - travelling salesman - towers of hanoi - soduko solver - sorting / filtering - comparing large lists - ...?
cheers, Chris Maunder The Code Project Co-founder Microsoft C++ MVP
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How about a full particle system whilst you there :) Havn't found any decent ones ;p
-= Reelix =-
Try Blenders: http://www.blender.org/ I've been using it tones over the last month and I can say 2 things: 1) it's really fast, and 2) it produces fabulous results, esp in hair-generation mode. You might just like it as an un-bloated particle system.
The worst thing about the darkness is the light at the end - DX-MON
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Language is kind of key here. And a lot of "lean and mean"-ness comes from linking correctly. To get rid of stuff in the C runtime library you don't need (want). Hello world is really pretty huge with a default c++ build. c# brings in tons of code at runtime that you didn't write, but the .exe can be teeny. In asm, it's not a lot bigger than the size of the string. So I'm hoping that describing your custom build will be part of the entry :) ...Steve
Why not use an Assembler such as NASM which comes with it's own linker then? :P
The worst thing about the darkness is the light at the end - DX-MON
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This article[^] got me thinking about something that is dear to my heart: the loss of the art of staying lean and mean. I'd like to run a fun competition to see who can write the leanest, meanest, most efficient (power, memory, cycles - you name it) solution to a standard problem. Any suggestions on what that problem should be? - travelling salesman - towers of hanoi - soduko solver - sorting / filtering - comparing large lists - ...?
cheers, Chris Maunder The Code Project Co-founder Microsoft C++ MVP
Hi Chris, I don't have time to get involved in any kind of competition here but I am an advocate for lean and mean code and I often feel like a martyr... I am glad I'm not the only one who thinks the art of writing code that runs efficiently is a worthwhile effort! (Layers of bloat and converting every desktop app to web based is hardly progress in my opinion. Can you imagine how fast our software SHOULD be running on the hardware we have? Well it would if it was written effificently without tiers and tiers of bloat!) --Jason
Know way too many languages... master of none!