Hello Keith,
It's always good to hear from a fellow programmer. I got the materials today and am working on the photofocus part.
I'm hoping to be able (in the future, mind you I realize you have to take baby steps first before you can walk) to PR the Intel manuals for the number of clock cycles to perform an instruction. This was a task that I always had to do in my previous job since my task was to pump packets out as fast as possible on the network. I expect to be doing this for 3D-games programming since the goal is to renders polygons as fast as possible to achieve a high frame per second count. My Intel manuals are worn and greasy from constantly having to look up the clock cycles for various instructions and their forms.
I also hope to be able to PR code sections also. In engineering one of the best tools available for the programer is to have code reviews from peer programmers. It's much easier to fix problems upfront during the development cycle than to wait for the testing cycle. Unfortunately most programmers are busy coding there own sections of code and can't usually spare the time to code review someone else's code. I can't tell you how many times we would have a code review scheduled in a conference room and then have to cancel the code review because no one had time to review the code before hand. Trying to do it in a 2 hour meeting just was not productive. This is sad because the process will save tons of time in the testing part of the project life cycle by indentifying faulty code, algorithms, and bad architecture at a time when it's more readily fixable. The other advantages is that it makes your fellow programmers familiar with your code so theyt can help out if your sick, you go on vacation, or you move on to a different project. But probably the best benifit is exposing other programmers to coding methologies. When you work with other bright programmers your programming can only become better by being exposed to other works. So I'm hoping PRing will help in this process. If it does I believe a consultant could make alot of money by teaching the system tailored specifically for code reviews to engineering companies. I've always been interested in software engineering processes since most companies really handle the engineering processes in a bad inefficient way much like reading one word at a time is an inefficient way to absorb information.
Well enough for now. I will let everybody know my progress. I need to practice the photofocus some more. Happy PRing.
Jimmy
[This message has been edited by jimjwright (edited July 26, 2001).]
