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Some historical perspective:Tom.G said:
How often will the number of elements being sorted be known at compile time?.Scott said:if you are sorting exactly 7 elements
I am writing assembly code at the moment because I demand time critical control of external signals while all interrupts are disabled, and exceptions impossible..Scott said:Coding at the Assembly level was once a common optimization practice.
Sometimes it is very, very stable. The number of hours in a day hasn't changed since the invention of computers. The number of states in the US has been stable for more than half a century. Even the number of schools in the Big Ten is constant on the time scale of compilimg.PeterDonis said:How often will the number of elements being sorted be known at compile time?
An easy example that answers your question, but not the general point:PeterDonis said:How often will the number of elements being sorted be known at compile time?
And sometimes it does.Vanadium 50 said:It does no good to spend an hour trying to speed up a sort by 30 minutes. It may not even make sense to hire a team of programmers to speed up a sort by 30 minutes compared to just getting a faster computer.