pairs from a list

[Paddy]

On Jan 23, 2:32 am, George Sakkis <george.sak... at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Jan 22, 1:34 pm, Paddy <paddy3... at googlemail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Jan 22, 5:34 am, George Sakkis <george.sak... at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > On Jan 22, 12:15 am, Paddy <paddy3... at googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > On Jan 22, 3:20 am, Alan Isaac <ais... at american.edu> wrote:> I want to generate sequential pairs from a list.
> > > > <<snip>>
> > > > > What is the fastest way? (Ignore the import time.)
>
> > > > 1) How fast is the method you have?
> > > > 2) How much faster does it need to be for your application?
> > > > 3) Are their any other bottlenecks in your application?
> > > > 4) Is this the routine whose smallest % speed-up would give the
> > > > largest overall speed up of your application?
>
> > > I believe the "what is the fastest way" question for such small well-
> > > defined tasks is worth asking on its own, regardless of whether it
> > > makes a difference in the application (or even if there is no
> > > application to begin with).
>
> > Hi George,
> > You need to 'get it right' first.
>

> For such trivial problems, getting it right alone isn't a particularly
> high expectation.

Hi George, not 'alone' but 'first'. And it is the ultimate
expectation. Who wants to recieve wrong software?

>
> > Micro optimizations for speed
> > without thought of the wider context is a bad habit to form and a time
> > waster.
>
> The OP didn't mention anything about the context; for all we know,
> this might be a homework problem or the body of a tight inner loop.

Thats why I thought to ask about the context.

> There is this tendency on c.l.py to assume that every optimization
> question is about a tiny subproblem of a 100 KLOC application. Without
> further context, we just don't know.

Again, I did not assume; I asked about the wider context. I too don't
believe your statement about c.l.p.

>
> > If the routine is all that needs to be delivered and it does not
> > perform at an acceptable speed then find out what is acceptable
> > and optimise towards that goal. My questions were set to get
> > posters to think more about the need for speed optimizations and
> > where they should be applied, (if at all).
>
> I don't agree with this logic in general.
But you don't defend yourself well by such a far-fetched example.

I've heard quality expressed as "meeting requirements", which I think
is apt. Falling short of requirements everyone knows doesn't give a
quality result, but equally 'exceeding' requirements also detracts
from quality (as does not knowing your requirements).
It is good to learn optimization techniques, which may be part of what
you are saying, but part of that is learning when it pays to apply
them and/or search for them; and when it does not.

- Paddy.

> Just because one can solve a
> problem by throwing a quick and dirty hack with quadratic complexity
> that happens to do well enough on current typical input, it doesn't
> mean he shouldn't spend ten or thirty minutes more to write a proper
> linear time solution, all else being equal or at least comparable
> (elegance, conciseness, readability, etc.). Of course it's a tradeoff;
> spending a week to save a few milliseconds on average is usually a
> waste for most applications, but being a lazy keyboard banger writing
> the first thing that pops into mind is not that good either.
>
> George