DeadlyMind - Slashdot User

Submission + - Sorting Algorithm Breaks Giga-sort Barrier (google.com) 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 29, 2010 @09:10AM

An anonymous reader writes: Researchers at the University of Virginia have recently open sourced an algorithm capable of sorting at a rate of one billion (integer) keys per second using a GPU. Although GPUs are often assumed to be poorly suited for algorithms like sorting, their results are several times faster than the best known CPU-based sorting implementations.

Submission + - Bill Gates Enrolls His Kids in Khan Academy 1

Submitted by theodp on Saturday August 28, 2010 @09:17PM

theodp writes: At some schools, a teaching load of five courses every academic year is considered excessive. But Sal Khan, as an earlier Slashdot post noted, manages to deliver his mini-lectures an average of 70,000 times a day. BusinessWeek reports that Khan Academy has a new fan in Bill Gates, who's been singing and tweeting the praises of the free-as-in-beer website. 'This guy is amazing,' Gates wrote. 'It is awesome how much he has done with very little in the way of resources.' Gates and his 11-year-old son have been soaking up videos, from algebra to biology. And at the Aspen Ideas Festival in front of 2,000 people, Gates gave Khan a shout-out, touting the 'unbelievable' Khan Academy tutorials that 'I've been using with my kids.' Gates, whose foundation spends $700MM a year on U.S. education, plans to talk to Khan soon.

Submission + - Some lesser-known truths about programming (rationalmind.net)

Submitted by

GreedyCapitalist

on Saturday August 28, 2010 @05:17AM

GreedyCapitalist writes: "Great programmers spend little of their time writing code — at least code that ends up in the final product. Programmers who spend much of their time writing code are too lazy, too ignorant, or too arrogant to find existing solutions to old problems. Great programmers are masters at recognizing and reusing common patterns. Good programmers are not afraid to refactor (rewrite) their code constantly to reach the ideal design. Bad programmers write code which lacks conceptual integrity, non-redundancy, hierarchy, and patterns, and so is very difficult to refactor. It’s easier to throw away bad code and start over than to change it."

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