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Part 2: Necessity of having a well defined process

Software Programming Process Part 2: Necessity of having a well defined process
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So why in the name of all that's holy do we need a process for the thing after all? We've all done it, and if something new comes up, there' always someone to ask. After all, -it's all been done before-

So ok, tomorrow if I ask you to write a program to give me all possible solutions for the eight queens (on a chessboard) problem, how many of you would do it? Whom would you consult for the algorithm? Better yet, how many of you would be able to give me a program that completes execution in less than an hour? Even if you copied it from a book, would you know why you're typing what you're typing?

Suppose I gave you something that you couldn't even copy from a book, like calculating trajectories of 3 bodies moving in space and influenced by each others gravitational pull. That's when some stars would be seen, right?

Here are four ways of writing the same loop. Those of you who've done the program earlier would know that it's part of the program in 'C' for showing all prime numbers from 1 to 1000000. (The program is of course not complete and the syntax is in no way accurate, please don't try to run it. I'm just proving a point in logic building)

I'm commenting out the output statements because we want only a comparison of individual cycle times.

All these four methods will give perfectly valid results without the //'s, the only difference being that the first program will take about 17 minutes to execute (depending on system speed) and the last one about 8 seconds. Have a closer look.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

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