aaw@pyuxss.UUCP (Aaron Werman) (02/09/84)
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Jon Bentley [1982] "Writing Efficient Programs" Prentice-Hall, N.J.
is about reducing the time/space requirements for cumbersome programs.
I found it vaguely interesting, but written poorly, and unprofessionally
edited, so I would not recommend the book.
The book is intelligently conceived: when, where, and how, should a
programmer attempt to deal with slow program execution. Every
programmer has to confront the issue regularly - and hence one of the
major problems of the book: what audience it addresses. Most serious
programmers have thought and dealt with efficiency problems on the
level of this book. Bentley notes that the issues are inappropriate
for students and beginning programmers, since efficiency is a post-hoc
issue in most projects.
What we are left with is then a collection of anecdotes and code
segments and discussions of how the algorithm or code was optimized.
This is written in the exact style of netnews submissions, with most
references being to "private communication of FU of BAR institute".
When I want to clarify my analysis of a problem I'll still look at
Djikstras' books.
There is an appendix containing a list of rules such as "logical tests
should be arranged such that inexpensive and often successful tests
precede expensive and rarely successful tests" which might have some
use as a limited checklist.
-aaron {allegra|harpo|ihnp4|pyuxi|zeppo}!pyuxss!aawthomas@utah-gr.UUCP (Spencer W. Thomas) (02/13/84)
See also the "Programming Pearls" column in the Feb 1984 CACM. It's about program tuning, and has some useful hints. =Spencer