From: Tom Payne <twp20@...>
Date: 2002-09-08T21:52:53+09:00
Subject: Re: Larry Wall's comments on Ruby

In article <1031340224.18778.799.camel@starcrusher>, W Kent Starr wrote:
> Which, geven the time of his rise to ascendency would be expected. We
> are all a product of "our times". While complexity theory has been
> around since the 70's (some would say off and on since the time of the
> Egyptians) but was not widely known outside of very tight academic
> circles before the mid-90's. Thus, Larry can be forgiven for thinking
> the concept of "objects" too difficult for the beginner.

To clear up the discussion here, I believe that Kent is refering to
complexity theory as the problem of understanding and managing large
systems, i.e. how write a big computer program: how to divide it up into
chunks and how those chunks interact.

Complexity Theory, to a computer scientist, is about understanding how
algorithms scale: if I give my sorting function an array that's 10 times
longer to sort does it take 10 times as long or 10*10 = 100 times as
long? It tells you why QuickSort is better than BubbleSort if you're
sorting more than a few objects. Much effort is spent both
understanding algorithms and designing new ones that scale better.

Tom