Re: a book or tutorial

[Achilles <maos@gbl.com.br>]

Mads Bondo Dydensborg wrote:
> 
> I can totally agree (in principle) about algorithms and knowing about the
> basics. Read Folye and van Dam for that. Most of the stuff Mike Abrash do
> is in there, although he implements and optimizes it wildly.
> 
> In practice, I would say that today you have very little reason to know
> about how to scanconvert your own lines using only integer arithmics, etc.
> If you are not (somehow) using hardware for this (even in 2d), you are
> doing something wrong. (Exceptions are if you are writing a general
> purpose library, like Mesa, or the GIMP or something similar).
> 
> I am not saying that it is not nice to know about CPU's (n'stuff). You
> should know enough to be able to profile your program and lay out your
> data structures in "cache-friendly" ways.
> 
> But, reading 500 pages about optimizing stuff for the intel 286, 386, 486
> and pentium (I) is almost a waste of time these days. Doing assembler for
> a linux game is quite silly, IMHO, unless you have very special
> needs. Reading about abusing VGA hardware is just a complete waste of time
> IMHO.
> 
> BTW: I have the greatest respect for Mike Abrash's work. I just don't
> think its worth investigating it today. Unless you have a special interest
> in these kind of things. The time spent reading about optimizing a texture
> mapper for a 386 is just better spent profiling your own code, and making
> sure you understand and use your graphics library as optimal as possible.

	Well, IMHO, you don't have to know how do make your code superfast and
optimized to just get the job done. But then ask yourself if you want
the job done, or if you want it done *well* - that's were those
specifics about CPUs, video hardware and other stuff come into practice.
Thing is, don't worry about writing the fastest, most efficient code the
first time, think about it when you really need to squeeze some extra
cycles.




Miguel Osorio.

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