One of the questions you ask yourself when you do anything that involves programming computers, is when to write a computer program, and when to just do things manually.<\/p>\n
Suppose, for example, you need to put a list of names in alphabetical order. If there are only five names, it’s easiest just to move them around in your text editor. But if there are a million names, you definitely want to use a sorting program. Somewhere between those numbers there is a crossover point.<\/p>\n
For tasks as common as sorting, you usually don’t need to do any coding — somebody has most likely done that for you. But there are many cases where nobody has written a program for you. And then you have a choice to make.<\/p>\n
How do you decide when a situation calls for writing a computer program? I used to think this was a question that called for cool headed and dispassionate logic.<\/p>\n
But now I realize that there is usually another factor to consider: Programming is fun! Even if it takes longer to do something by writing a program, I might decide to write a program anyway. After all, something can take longer, yet still make the day go faster.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, it might be interesting to come up with a real solution to the question of when to solve a problem with code, as opposed to brute force. I think I might just have an algorithm…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of the questions you ask yourself when you do anything that involves programming computers, is when to write a computer program, and when to just do things manually. Suppose, for example, you need to put a list of names in alphabetical order. If there are only five names, it’s easiest just to move them … Continue reading “To code or not to code”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16868"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16868"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16868\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16869,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16868\/revisions\/16869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}