From chemistry-request-: at :-ccl.net Tue Dec 10 20:11:56 1991
Date: Tue, 10 Dec 91 20:04:44 -0500
From: jle {*at*} world.std.com (Joe M Leonard)
To: chemistry "-at-" ccl.net
Subject: Attack of the killer workstations
Status: RO

Reviewing the recent discussion regarding C vs. Fortran and structured vs.
spagetti coding, isn't it reasonable to consider the time of the programmer
as more important that the code's runtime (within reason)?  Given that
approx. $20k workstations are comparable to Cray machines, isn't 10-ish%
overhead more than worth the human time savings through better-thought-
out programming (structured, modular, OO, etc.)?  I hope the day's past
for really needing to count cycles in loops - as one can wait for the next
version of workstation xxx to gain appreciable speedups.

Obviously, this isn't the case for mpp machines, for which the consensus is
that one must rethink and/or reimplement algorithm's in order to use
the hardware to advantage.  Still, this might prove to be an example where
clearer coding styles might turn out to be a win after all...

Joe Leonard
jle |-at-| world.std.com