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Re: fast for loop [message #54407] Mon, 11 June 2007 12:46
Conor is currently offline  Conor
Messages: 138
Registered: February 2007
Senior Member
On Jun 11, 3:36 pm, David Fanning <n...@dfanning.com> wrote:
> Conor writes:
>> personally, I'm a fan of this type of poetry:
>
>> http://www.foo.be/docs/tpj/issues/vol3_2/tpj0302-0012.html
>
>> I was even pondering writing some obfuscated IDL, but it's just not
>> the same as perl. IDL just doesn't have that naturally confusing
>> syntax that makes obfuscation so wonderful :)
>
> You are probably not yet familiar with Craig Markwardt's
> IDL-ku verse:
>
> http://www.dfanning.com/tips/questions.html
>
> Cheers,
>
> David
> --
> David Fanning, Ph.D.
> Fanning Software Consulting, Inc.
> Coyote's Guide to IDL Programming:http://www.dfanning.com/
> Sepore ma de ni thui. ("Perhaps thou speakest truth.")


:)
Re: fast for loop [message #54408 is a reply to message #54407] Mon, 11 June 2007 12:36 Go to previous message
David Fanning is currently offline  David Fanning
Messages: 11724
Registered: August 2001
Senior Member
Conor writes:

> personally, I'm a fan of this type of poetry:
>
> http://www.foo.be/docs/tpj/issues/vol3_2/tpj0302-0012.html
>
> I was even pondering writing some obfuscated IDL, but it's just not
> the same as perl. IDL just doesn't have that naturally confusing
> syntax that makes obfuscation so wonderful :)

You are probably not yet familiar with Craig Markwardt's
IDL-ku verse:

http://www.dfanning.com/tips/questions.html

Cheers,

David
--
David Fanning, Ph.D.
Fanning Software Consulting, Inc.
Coyote's Guide to IDL Programming: http://www.dfanning.com/
Sepore ma de ni thui. ("Perhaps thou speakest truth.")
Re: fast for loop [message #54409 is a reply to message #54408] Mon, 11 June 2007 12:26 Go to previous message
Conor is currently offline  Conor
Messages: 138
Registered: February 2007
Senior Member
On Jun 11, 1:39 pm, David Fanning <n...@dfanning.com> wrote:
> Conor writes:
>> Normally I have no artistic talen what-so-ever, so
>> coming up with confusing idl code in order to avoid for loops is my
>> way of expressing my creative talents :)
>
> I'm a big proponent of the Programming as Poetry school
> of thought. But I would encourage you to read more Billy
> Collins:
>
> http://tinyurl.com/29dzj5
>
> And less of the more contemporary poets:
>
> http://www.moriapoetry.com/perrone998.html
>
> Your programs will be better for it. :-)
>
> Cheers,
>
> David
>
> --
> David Fanning, Ph.D.
> Fanning Software Consulting, Inc.
> Coyote's Guide to IDL Programming:http://www.dfanning.com/
> Sepore ma de ni thui. ("Perhaps thou speakest truth.")



personally, I'm a fan of this type of poetry:

http://www.foo.be/docs/tpj/issues/vol3_2/tpj0302-0012.html

I was even pondering writing some obfuscated IDL, but it's just not
the same as perl. IDL just doesn't have that naturally confusing
syntax that makes obfuscation so wonderful :)
Re: fast for loop [message #54411 is a reply to message #54409] Mon, 11 June 2007 12:00 Go to previous message
JD Smith is currently offline  JD Smith
Messages: 850
Registered: December 1999
Senior Member
On Mon, 11 Jun 2007 07:01:36 -0700, Conor wrote:

> On Jun 10, 10:55 pm, David Fanning <n...@dfanning.com> wrote:
>> airy.ji...@gmail.com writes:
>>> Sometimes we could use some special function to avoid them.Sometimes
>>> we could use more lines of code to avoid them.
>>> There are many skills to make the program more efficient and fast.But
>>> in fact loops are ineluctable,the key is how
>>> to use it.
>>> Anyway,I agree with you ,Mark.IDL indeed need to improve its
>>> efficiency on the loops and some arithmatic computing.IDL6.4
>>> shows a lot of features which can be proved thier hard working for
>>> it.At least 50% elevation of the drawing speed and new
>>> OpenGL Object indicates an nice future of the IDL.It's wothy for us to
>>> waiting new edtion of the IDL which can give us some
>>> fast loops,^_^.
>>
>> Yeah, and life would be more interesting if pigs could fly.
>>
>> If fast loops are what you were after, I'd guess you would
>> design a language that looked very much like C or FORTRAN.
>> IDL is something different and I don't see much point wishing
>> it wasn't.

> Granted, it would be nice to have fast for loops (for those times
> where you really just have to use one). However, I do also enjoy the
> challenge of having to come up with fun new ways to avoid them.
> There's nothing more satisfying than taking a couple lines of code
> wrapped inside a for loop and turning it into one line of convoluted
> array operations. Normally I have no artistic talen what-so-ever, so
> coming up with confusing idl code in order to avoid for loops is my
> way of expressing my creative talents :)

It's funny because it's true. Some of the tricks we resort to to get good
performance out of IDL fall in the category of elegant. Most do not.
I've long advocated a specially compiled for loop which drops essentially
all the features of the IDL interpreter, which no doubt are what make a
single round trip through the for loop so slow (warning: this is informed
speculation). This "optimized side loop", which might get enabled with a
compiler flag, would have some inherent inflexibility, but should offer
much better performance.

JD
Re: fast for loop [message #54412 is a reply to message #54411] Mon, 11 June 2007 10:39 Go to previous message
David Fanning is currently offline  David Fanning
Messages: 11724
Registered: August 2001
Senior Member
Conor writes:

> Normally I have no artistic talen what-so-ever, so
> coming up with confusing idl code in order to avoid for loops is my
> way of expressing my creative talents :)

I'm a big proponent of the Programming as Poetry school
of thought. But I would encourage you to read more Billy
Collins:

http://tinyurl.com/29dzj5

And less of the more contemporary poets:

http://www.moriapoetry.com/perrone998.html

Your programs will be better for it. :-)

Cheers,

David

--
David Fanning, Ph.D.
Fanning Software Consulting, Inc.
Coyote's Guide to IDL Programming: http://www.dfanning.com/
Sepore ma de ni thui. ("Perhaps thou speakest truth.")
Re: fast for loop [message #54415 is a reply to message #54412] Mon, 11 June 2007 07:01 Go to previous message
Conor is currently offline  Conor
Messages: 138
Registered: February 2007
Senior Member
On Jun 10, 10:55 pm, David Fanning <n...@dfanning.com> wrote:
> airy.ji...@gmail.com writes:
>> Sometimes we could use some special function to avoid them.Sometimes
>> we could use more lines of code to avoid them.
>> There are many skills to make the program more efficient and fast.But
>> in fact loops are ineluctable,the key is how
>> to use it.
>> Anyway,I agree with you ,Mark.IDL indeed need to improve its
>> efficiency on the loops and some arithmatic computing.IDL6.4
>> shows a lot of features which can be proved thier hard working for
>> it.At least 50% elevation of the drawing speed and new
>> OpenGL Object indicates an nice future of the IDL.It's wothy for us to
>> waiting new edtion of the IDL which can give us some
>> fast loops,^_^.
>
> Yeah, and life would be more interesting if pigs could fly.
>
> If fast loops are what you were after, I'd guess you would
> design a language that looked very much like C or FORTRAN.
> IDL is something different and I don't see much point wishing
> it wasn't.
>
> Cheers,
>
> David
> --
> David Fanning, Ph.D.
> Fanning Software Consulting, Inc.
> Coyote's Guide to IDL Programming:http://www.dfanning.com/
> Sepore ma de ni thui. ("Perhaps thou speakest truth.")


Granted, it would be nice to have fast for loops (for those times
where you really just have to use one). However, I do also enjoy the
challenge of having to come up with fun new ways to avoid them.
There's nothing more satisfying than taking a couple lines of code
wrapped inside a for loop and turning it into one line of convoluted
array operations. Normally I have no artistic talen what-so-ever, so
coming up with confusing idl code in order to avoid for loops is my
way of expressing my creative talents :)
Re: fast for loop [message #54420 is a reply to message #54415] Sun, 10 June 2007 19:55 Go to previous message
David Fanning is currently offline  David Fanning
Messages: 11724
Registered: August 2001
Senior Member
airy.jiang@gmail.com writes:

> Sometimes we could use some special function to avoid them.Sometimes
> we could use more lines of code to avoid them.
> There are many skills to make the program more efficient and fast.But
> in fact loops are ineluctable,the key is how
> to use it.
> Anyway,I agree with you ,Mark.IDL indeed need to improve its
> efficiency on the loops and some arithmatic computing.IDL6.4
> shows a lot of features which can be proved thier hard working for
> it.At least 50% elevation of the drawing speed and new
> OpenGL Object indicates an nice future of the IDL.It's wothy for us to
> waiting new edtion of the IDL which can give us some
> fast loops,^_^.

Yeah, and life would be more interesting if pigs could fly.

If fast loops are what you were after, I'd guess you would
design a language that looked very much like C or FORTRAN.
IDL is something different and I don't see much point wishing
it wasn't.

Cheers,

David
--
David Fanning, Ph.D.
Fanning Software Consulting, Inc.
Coyote's Guide to IDL Programming: http://www.dfanning.com/
Sepore ma de ni thui. ("Perhaps thou speakest truth.")
Re: fast for loop [message #54421 is a reply to message #54420] Sun, 10 June 2007 19:00 Go to previous message
airy.jiang is currently offline  airy.jiang
Messages: 37
Registered: May 2007
Member
On 6 11 , 2 33 , mark...@gmail.com wrote:
> This is a feature request. I've been programming all day and my brain
> is so tired of constantly trying to think of ways to avoid for loops.
> IDL needs some kind of a fast for loop. That's all.
>
> Mark

Sometimes we could use some special function to avoid them.Sometimes
we could use more lines of code to avoid them.
There are many skills to make the program more efficient and fast.But
in fact loops are ineluctable,the key is how
to use it.
Anyway,I agree with you ,Mark.IDL indeed need to improve its
efficiency on the loops and some arithmatic computing.IDL6.4
shows a lot of features which can be proved thier hard working for
it.At least 50% elevation of the drawing speed and new
OpenGL Object indicates an nice future of the IDL.It's wothy for us to
waiting new edtion of the IDL which can give us some
fast loops,^_^.
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