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## 2007/09/25

### Nonuniformity

After the frustration of two times of rewriting subsides, I feel more confident of being a Computer Science student now. Knuth said these in his article Algorithms in Modern Mathematics and Computer Science:

One of the most striking differences that I have observed between the habits of computer scientists and traditional mathematicians is that a computer scientist tends to be much more willing to deal with a multitude of quite different cases. Data structures in computer science needn't be homogeneous, and algorithms can involve many different kinds of steps. [...] Sometimes this tolerance for diversity is a weakness of computer scientists, because we don't try as hard as we should to find uniform laws. But sometimes it is a strength, because we can deal fluently with concepts that are inherently nonuniform.

If you look into the literate program of TOY86 assembler, you'll find that there are many, many case analyses. I think it's partly because of the ad hoc nature of this program. The hardest time is when writing documentation for these case analyses, since I just have to say "if... otherwise... and if... otherwise...," quite annoying. XD

--
I've sent a letter to cyy while keeping finding and fixing bugs.

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yen39/25/2007 5:22 am 說：