That's a really long night.

[WizardStan]

I work for a consulting firm as a contract programmer. Basically, company calls up, says they need something done, someone takes the specs, and I write it up. It could be anything. Need an excel plugin? Got it covered. Want a detailed report on system usage? Just point me at the data. Need to search through hundreds of emails for something that resembles an address? STAND BACK! I know regular expressions!
Anywho, I've been contracted to this one company for a few months now, updating old processes, writing new ones, whatever. This company is fairly strict on what technologies we're allowed to use, as they should be. New programming languages need to be presented and prove how they'll help, old programming languages are filtered out.
So an email came through a short while ago from another programmer on the global help forum. They were trying to find a copy of VB6 to update an old process.
Microsoft decommissioned VB6 4 or 5 years ago. At the time, it was announced that official internal support for VB6 would be decoed "phased out". All apps should be upgraded to VB.Net, and no new applications would be permitted in VB6. Last year they finally pulled the plug and removed it. Everyone had 3 years to migrate their applications. When told he would have to rewrite the application in VB.NET, his response was "changes don't happen overnight"
The last 4 years have obviously been the longest night in history. He almost became a "customer", but fortunately the task was given to someone else. My VB6 is about 4 or 5 years out of date

[earl colby pottinger]

Be happy

If he is this far behind the times don't be surprise if the main bottleneck in his code's performance is he is using 'Bubble Sorting' on his lists.

Had that happen for real to me about fifteen years ago, they could not understand why the program that they had used for over five years that ran so fine till then sudden took all night to run after they took over and merged in another company that originally was bigger than themselves . I think their parts list doubled in size but the customer count became about five times larger.

[Racket_Man]

If he is this far behind the times don't be surprise if the main bottleneck in his code's performance is he is using 'Bubble Sorting' on his lists.

.

OM Frackin G Bubble Sort is a term I have not heard or seen in use for like 30 years (since first time around in college). People still use that sorting method???????

[earl colby pottinger]

Twenty years

OM Frackin G Bubble Sort is a term I have not heard or seen in use for like 30 years (since first time around in college). People still use that sorting method???????

Well, the program was written twenty years ago.

But what I was pointing out is that some programmers (that does include me at times) when they don't know about new techs or make assumptions about what type of loads their programs will have to handle.

When conditions change these programs fail. See http://thedailywtf.com/ for plenty of examples.

[Utter_iMADNESS]

STAND BACK! I know regular expressions!

[Magpie]

OM Frackin G Bubble Sort is a term I have not heard or seen in use for like 30 years (since first time around in college). People still use that sorting method???????

I seem to recall being made to learn it in first year. I'm not sure if I ever had to USE it in an assignment (I doubt it), but I think it came up.

[Eric the Grey]

I seem to recall being made to learn it in first year. I'm not sure if I ever had to USE it in an assignment (I doubt it), but I think it came up.

I remember having to learn bubble-sort, along with a couple of other types in my COBOL class. If I remember right, the thing never did give consistent results (although it may have been one of the other sorts, it's been a long time).

OT Rant:

The same instructor is the one who put the following on a test:

"An assignment requires the writing of a sort routine. List the steps you will go thorough to complete your assignment."

She docked EVERYONE in the class, as well as the same class the previous semester because nobody put as the first step "Check if a sort routine is already written and available."

None of us could convince her that since the question said we had to write the thing, it obviously wasn't available...

Anyway back on topic, I would suppose that if I had to do something like that, even today, I would fall back on what I know. I'm guessing (not having really done any programming for a looooonnng time) there are betters sorts now..


Eric the Grey

[earl colby pottinger]

Maybe something else

Maybe I should not have used the term 'Bubble-Sort' since I never saw the code itself.

The program originally printed out mailing labels in sorted ordered, I can't remember if it sorted by name or addresses, but I remember what they complained about.

Before the merger the label printing would be started in the morning, about a few minutes after the program was started the labels would start to be printed.

I was called because after they merged with the other company and added the new names to their mailing list not only did they have to wait a long time before printing started, but there was now a delay better each label being printed. They would have to leave the printing to run overnight to get it to complete it's run.

I was there to removed a jammed label and also because they thought a faster printer would solve their problem. I had tell them it was not the printer and to contact their programmer.

Now that I think about it, the program clearly was not sorting the list before printing. But however it worked, it was not design to handle a large increase in the number of labels was it needed to print out.

[Chromatix]

Bubblesort is still very commonly used, simply because it's easy to understand and therefore to remember. And most programmers can't remember how to deal with function pointers in order to write the comparison functor that qsort() requires.

Personally, I know about half a dozen sort algorithms and how to implement them, and how to tell which situations they are most useful for. Bubblesort is in the list - it's used when the data set is never going to be large and ease of implementation is paramount. Others include insertion-sort (a good generic upgrade from bubble-sort), merge-sort (useful for divide-and-conquer on large data sets), comb-sort, radix-sort and scan-sort (the last is great when moving an object is much more expensive than comparing it).

The label printer may well have been sorting the list just before printing each one. After the first sort, the sorting operation becomes a scan to make sure it's already in order - much faster than a full sort, but with the larger data set it was taking long enough to start being noticed.

[lordlundar]

She docked EVERYONE in the class, as well as the same class the previous semester because nobody put as the first step "Check if a sort routine is already written and available."

None of us could convince her that since the question said we had to write the thing, it obviously wasn't available...

Actually, I can actually see her point of view on that. She's reminding you that part of your job is to be observant and not just bobbleheads who can code. Would you still rag on her if later on you had a manager tell you to code up a sort routine when there was an up to date one already in use?

[Eric the Grey]

Actually, I can actually see her point of view on that. She's reminding you that part of your job is to be observant and not just bobbleheads who can code. Would you still rag on her if later on you had a manager tell you to code up a sort routine when there was an up to date one already in use?

Well, the problem was with the wording of her question. It said the task "required the writing of" the sort. If it had said the task "required a sort" then the first step would have been to check to see if one was available. If we have to write one, we already know one doesn't exist.

Piddly, but then, I'm a gamer, and wording is important.


Eric the Grey

[Racket_Man]

I seem to recall being made to learn it in first year. I'm not sure if I ever had to USE it in an assignment (I doubt it), but I think it came up.

I did use it in class once back in mumble mumble mumble ...79...... mumble mumble

and I understand its simplicity and ease of use. but if you have a large data set..... listen to the HDD grind

[TheSHAD0W]

One thing about the bubble sort is it can be implemented in a tiny few lines of code. When you're working with embedded devices, don't have a sort library readily available, and are working with a small number of data entries, it's still handy. It's also the basis of the Shell sort, which is pretty efficient and also rather simple.