Book in the works by Alexander Stepanov

Chris R. Miller lordSaurontheGreat at gmail.com
Sat Sep 6 13:06:13 PDT 2008


Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> Chris R. Miller wrote:
>> Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>>> See http://www.stepanovpapers.com/eop/eop.pdf for an interesting read.
>>> The school of thought put forth by Stepanov resolves the recent
>>> digitalmars.d debate on interface design (e.g. whether opIndex should be
>>> part of a list interface) by favoring designs that define primitive
>>> efficient operations from which others, potentially less efficient, can
>>> be derived. On pages 5-6:
>>>
>>> "A computational basis for a type is a finite set of procedures that
>>> enable the construction of any other procedure on the type. A basis is
>>> efficient if and only if any procedure implemented using it is as
>>> efficient as an equivalent procedure written in terms of an alternative
>>> basis. For example, a basis for unsigned 32-bit integers providing only
>>> zero, equality, and the successor function is not efficient since the
>>> implementation of addition in terms of successor is linear."
>>
>> In terms that those of us less practiced in the deeper jargon of
>> computer science might understand?  I read that about five times and
>> couldn't figure out exactly what was being said.  I gather he's making a
>> case that a specification should provide a primitive guarantee of
>> efficiency, but that it is not necessary for that guarantee to be
>> enforced in the case of less-primitive algorithms making use of the
>> construct which the specification applies to.  I'm still not at all sure
>> though, so some clarification would be appreciated!
> 
> The jargon is appropriately defined before being used. It's hard to
> explain it without actually pasting the contents of the first pages
> here, so you may want to read them if interested.

I have downloaded it, but with the amount of other things on my plate
reading a 107 page document has to take back-burner to a few other tasks.

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