Chief Delphi - What Do We Really Program?

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- Programming (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=51)

- - What Do We Really Program? (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=18542)

ASP (in JScript), HTML and the like.
As for real languages...
Python and Perl

Quote:

Originally posted by EbonySeraphim
As much as you want me to have flamed you I didn't. I did clearly state my disbelief of what you said. And if you do have all the experience you said, you shouldn't be saying "I'm no different than anyone else" because at that age hardly anyone could/should have covered that stuff.

As obnoxious/rude/out-of-line as I might seem in saying this, I'll go ahead and do it: I created this thread, so I can and will discuss anything I want - as long as the moderators don't find it so inappropriate for this forum that they delete it.

I will apologize if I offended you for not believing you, but there is no need to make me look like public enemy number one.

As I said in my post, I have a lot of free time. I don't see how learning all of that makes me anything special. No, I'm not stupid incase anyone thinks that, but I think I got no life.

"I can and will discuss anything I want" - This little comment in my opinion is saying like "I am the boss of the board, so you will respect what I post". This is really boasting, no?

I am not making you out to be public enemy #1. You are making me out to be a super human, knowledge absorbing brainiac. I am not this, and hope to never be this.

Ok brainiacs, here is a link to last year's ACM programming contest World Finals problem set:

http://icpc.baylor.edu/icpc/finals/problems.pdf

See how many of those you can finish.

STOP arguing, READ THE definitions :P

scripting language - A loose term for any language
that is weakly typed or untyped and has little or no
provision for complex data structures. A program in a
scripting language (a "script") is often interpreted (but
see Ousterhout's dichotomy).

Hence the phrase "data structures."
Java = Programming Language
PHP = Programming Language
Javascript = Scripting Language
etc...

programming language - An artificial language used to write instructions that can be translated into machine language and then executed by a computer.

To Raven_Writer:
Out of context, what I said would seem as if I were boasting. Right before it, I said "since I started this thread."(or something of the sort) And I was implying that just under this topic, not the whole forum or even this section of it.

About the world programming contest pdf - I don't even really understand what it was asking for. Of course it could be because I only looked at for a minute and not a second more. Looking at the problems, they don't seem to hard for a professional to do, and maybe if I understood what it was asking for, I could tell if I couldn't/could do any of them.

The problems are clearly defined, you just need to read it carefully. They aren't meant to test your ability with a programming language, they're meant to test your ability to solve a problem that could not be solved without a computer.

They take an input file containing data sets and produce an output file with the results. This will be a common practice when you get to college, its impossible for profs to grade projects if they have to enter the data through a gui.

Take problem A for example. You are given a rectangular box and a set of data points. You are supposed to figure out the maximum volume that would be occupied by placing balloons at the data points, one by one, inflating them until they either hit the side of the box or another balloon. You can use the data points in any order you want, and you don't necessarily have to use them all. Depending on the order applied, they may not all be available if the space is already occupied by a previously placed balloon. The output is the total volume within the box that is not occupied by any balloons. You're trying to minimize that volume.

Its a complex problem. You have to think "inside the box". Once you break it down you will loop through every possible combination until you find the best solution. This is similar to game theory used in AI.

I'll go back home[at school] and re-look at the problem there. There seem to be many solutions. One note about your comparison to game AI - it doesn't always do what's best for results. There is a compromise between what's best and what's fastest.