CodeBlab

In 1992, I coded the first incarnation of yellow pages on-a-map, CityDisc, the brainchild of Ben Hoefnagels, a great guy and visionary. I really liked to work for him. He would tell me what he wanted, and let met code. In those days, software had to run on a 6 MHz Intel 80286 from a 720kB floppy disc. I explained to Ben than in order to fit 3000 streets (and 30.000 addresses) on one floppy, we should use vector graphics. So Ben told me: “OK, go do it!” This first prototype was rather slow. So Ben told me: “Make it faster!” Profiling showed that 92% of the run time was consumed by one function: sqrt(). Small wonder, coding vector rendering is all about Pythagoras. For hours I, fruitlessly, tried to make a fast my_sqrt(). Then I moved the problem up one layer of abstraction. If I could not speed up sqrt(), I might find a way to speed up the function that used it: the length() function. On a hunch, I tried:

#define length(x,y) ((x > y) ? (x + y/3) : (y + x/3))

I hit <Ctrl><F9> (Yes, Turbo C.) and BANG there was the map, almost instantaneous. I never forgot that lesson: Problems can be hard on one level of abstraction but easy on an other.