Striking the Root

Thoreau said, "There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root." It was a great temptation for us to ignore the scheduling algorithm because of the already good answer we had. To make the matter worse we were not even sure if we could solve the problem like we wanted to. However, Mac Newbold our Chief Software Architect was willing to take a mighty strike to the root and he has come through in shining colors, I cannot praise him enough. Brilliant work Mac!

We faced a lot of challenges in our task of improving the algorithm. To solve the problem we pulled out of our database of schedules and began looking for the schedules in which the old algorithm most poorly scheduled. In the process we found some major obstacles we'd need to solve to make your scheduling better. We tried out a lot of ideas and most didn't go liked we'd hoped, I think it is fair to say the task was daunting. We could have easily done a lot of other things with the time it took to solve this problem; I can say today though it was the right thing to do for you our users. I feel honestly that this improvement has been a major step in taking Gradefix from being good to great and we are proud to release it to you.

Thank you to so many of you for your help with testing, development, ideas, and support. I am always amazed at the caliber of people Gradefix attracts. May you all have a great semester, keep up the good work.

Thanks,
Mark Polson
CEO
Gradefix.com