programming everywhere

[EmperorIQ]

to those who program, do you find yoruself thinking about algorithms, at times? when you're walking, eating driving?

for example. one day i was driving and i was thinking about way to make a car drive itself. Should the car konw the road? Is that cheating? Shouldn't a true AI system be able to have limited view of the world and operate correctly? Maybe cheating would be ok and have cars propogate alerts to each other like pot holes or road kill, etc. etc.

 

[MSCoder610]

<backs away slowly>

I'm a Comp Sci major, and I can honestly say that hasn't happened to me

 

[EmperorIQ]

it will man, it will my gf has gotten used to it. one day she hung out with me and some friends and we were talking about the same thing, and she just laughed at us. haha

 

[RaynorWolfcastle]

<Austin Powers> NERD ALERT!</Austin Powers>

 

[notfred]

If you don't think about stuff like that on occasion, why the hell would you major in Comp Sci? YOu wouldn't major in art if you never thought about painting or sculpting or anything, and you wouldn't major in history if you never thought about the past, would you? So why would you major in computer science or engineering and not think about the types of problems associated with those fields?

 

[beyonddc]

Yes I do think about programming sometime while I'm just driving or doing non-computer related tasks.

 

[yllus]

I do often envision problem criteria for everyday stuff and then wonder why people around ask, "Why do ___ work like that?" I mean if you just applied a tiny bit of logical thinking it's often rather obvious.

 

[DT4K]

I think about work often when I'm doing other stuff. A lot of the ideas I have come to me while I'm not at work. I'll just be grocery shopping or something and thinking about things like how to design my db tables or what a certain interface should look like, or even more detailed things like how to code a certain function.

 

[RaynorWolfcastle]

Originally posted by: notfred
If you don't think about stuff like that on occasion, why the hell would you major in Comp Sci? YOu wouldn't major in art if you never thought about painting or sculpting or anything, and you wouldn't major in history if you never thought about the past, would you? So why would you major in computer science or engineering and not think about the types of problems associated with those fields?

relax there, ace. It was just a joke.

 

[tfinch2]

I dream in code

 

[Rogue]

Considering that I work primarily with networking and databases, I am always trying to find the fastest, most efficient path everywhere I go (driving, walking, etc.) and I'm always trying to logically organize everything around me as much as possible. My hard drive filing system is basically a relational database model with the index stored in my brain. DAMN IT PROCESSES TO HELL FOR THIS!!!

 

[Gnurb]

some of my best ideas for algorithms come while i'm in my psych class

 

[MSCoder610]

Originally posted by: RaynorWolfcastle

Originally posted by: notfred
If you don't think about stuff like that on occasion, why the hell would you major in Comp Sci? YOu wouldn't major in art if you never thought about painting or sculpting or anything, and you wouldn't major in history if you never thought about the past, would you? So why would you major in computer science or engineering and not think about the types of problems associated with those fields?

relax there, ace. It was just a joke.

:thumbsup:

 

[eakers]

i remember once someone posted here about what the alogrithm would be for an elevator.

everytime i step into an elevator now its all i think about. "how does it know what floor to go to first?" etc

 

[Descartes]

All the time, and almost to the point where I wish it would stop. More frequently I will observe problems throughout the day and think, "I can solve that." I got my first gig that way, and I continue to get gigs by thinking that way when I interact with a client. I find that as the years go on I think at higher levels of abstraction; I think more about generalized solutions to large-scale problems and distill it from there as opposed to thinking of the actual algorithms that might be employed to solve them.

Anyway, I got to a point to where I was almost obsessive, so I had to cut back. I was losing sleep, spending too much time on things, etc. I balanced myself out by obsessing about my other interests

 

[AFB]

YES all the time.

I view things as how they could be simplfied with computers and code in addition to methods other than technology.

 

[Tea Bag]

I always try to analyze what's happening with anything that is going on with what I'm using regardless if it is directly computer-based.. The elevator is a good example. You just have to have a systematic way of thinking. If you are a good programmer, you know that the majority of the time, your first idea usually isnt the best, so you have a backup

 

[oboeguy]

Originally posted by: Tea Bag
I always try to analyze what's happening with anything that is going on with what I'm using regardless if it is directly computer-based.. The elevator is a good example. You just have to have a systematic way of thinking. If you are a good programmer, you know that the majority of the time, your first idea usually isnt the best, so you have a backup

 

[LordMorpheus]

I'm not a comp sci major, I am a mechE, but seeing as my feild of interest is robotics, I should know at least the basics, so I'm going through the comp classes here, at least until they get to be too much to handle with my engineering schedule (here = Rice University).

Anywho, our final project in comp210 was to write a program to play connect-n (connect-5 being an example, but our program had to adapt to different board sizes and minimun lengths, not too hard to do). Anyway, the day before the program was due I came up with a better idea, around 11PM, sat down and finished 30 minutes before the deadline (10 AM). I was seeing code for a good portion of the next day . . and then they gave us a blanket extension so I did the same thing sunday night . . . Oh well. My program won our tournament ( = 100 extra credit points) so I got a 200/100 on the assignment. And my prof threatened me with physical violence if I didn't take the next comp class. Oh well, I'll get out of it eventually, but yeah, I know what you are talking about. (p.s. the guy who won a couple years ago went absolutely nuts and coded for 62 hours when he did this project, no foor or sleep. I thought he was sh!tting us, but I've heard this story confirmed multiple times. Scary.)

 

[Chaotic42]

Nope, not really. Then again I hate programming, but I have to do it sometimes.

 

[DT4K]

A couple nights ago, I found myself wondering WHY IN THE FVCK it takes 5 minutes to buy 1 item at a department store(Sears, JC Penny's, etc.) when it only takes 2 minutes to buy 30 items at the grocery store. I was watching the person at the register and trying to imagine what kind of interface they have that requires them to hit so many keys, and how it seems like it should be so much simpler. I started imagining what the db structure for a department store should look like and what all the possible transactions were, and why the interface needed to be any more complicated than just scan the item and take the payment.