C++ Programming

[J. R. Valverde]

Just my 2¢ in all this nonsense:

First, about trust:

	NEVER EVER trust the computer to do the right thing. A computer is
a device designed by humans to run programs written by humans. Humans make
mistakes. Dot.

	It never pays trusting a compiler. Or a language. That's utter
nonsense. You may "rely" on your experience using a tool to assume it
often does the right thing, but that's all.

Second about optimization:

	Unless you can look under the hood (and you do), NEVER EVER assume
one optimizer is better than other. Or that a language may be better optimized
than other. It all depends on the implementation, which in turn depends on
the ability of the author(s), which turn out to be humans.

Bottom line:

	Whatever you are doing: if you can, try a few tools and see which one
works better for you *at that particular problem* (where "problem" encompasses
all, the abstract, practical, compute problems AND the sociological, environment,
etc... aspects as well).

	I'm not going to recall horror stories now.

				j


-- 
	These opinions are mine and only mine. Hey man, I saw them first!

			    José R. Valverde

	De nada sirve la Inteligencia Artificial cuando falta la Natural