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| Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, January 06 2013 @ 10:19 AM EST |
There's a difference between translating one language into another and having an
algorithm spelt out.
I've translated different programs from Fortran and COBOL into Data/Basic (Basic
under Pick). The Fortran program was a nightmare in terms of utilising
Data/Basic features (admittedly it was translated at an early stage in my Pick
programming before I had a real grasp of the power of features of Pick) - I
literally translated each function; however for the COBOL program I looked at
the inputs and the outputs and wrote the program from scratch - effectively
having to write the algorithm first.
If there had been a description of the algorithm for both the programs, the
Fortran conversion may not have been such a mess (complete with a bug I never
did figure out) and the COBOL one would have saved me about 5 minutes.
However, if I give you a C code for evaluating the highest common factor of two
numbers using Euclid's algorithm [in fact I did below] it may not be obvious
what is happening, but the algorithm clearly spells out (in English) how to do
it [see message below].
The point being that any programming language can probably be obfuscated enough
to make it hard to understand what the algorithm is; or even deliberately
programmed in such a way which can make it difficult to use efficiently - in
which case, an analysis would have to be made to ascertain the algorithm being
used: totally nullifying the supposed point of patents to promote the sciences
by giving a limited (NOT lifetime of the invention) monopoly in return for full,
clear, concise and exact terms of how to build the invention (the
"recipe" for the invention having to be worked out from the working
model - effectively reverse engineering).[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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