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<body><br><hr id="stopSpelling">> From: mmille10@comcast.net<br>> To: squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org<br>> Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2007 21:25:57 +0000<br>> Subject: Re: Polynomial Division Challenge<br>> <br>> Hmm! I see what you're saying. You make a really good argument against Code Golf. After I read your note I thought to myself, "Well it was based on Perl Golf for crying out loud." I felt kind of dumb not seeing that as a red flag. I paid a little attention to the metrics that were used, like "keystrokes",<br><br>If they are using keystrokes as the criteria then they don't count it right. All those perl programs should have at least 50% more then the literal characters in the source file since you have to hold down shift (or worse on non-English keyboards) for at least half of what is in the program.<br><br>>but I didn't fully consider their implications. You're right. It just encourages ugly code. When I looked at the stats of the "top 10" winners in the Polynomial Division problem, I noticed that the Ruby and Perl versions<br>> were winning out over the Python versions. I've read that Pythoners tend to be more concerned with a "correct way to do things", which puts them at a disadvantage using this sort of criteria. You're right that things<br>> like the length of method names can also put a program at an advantage or disadvantage in the rankings.<br><br>Well, actually one must keep in mind Perl has made "concise" synonymous with "unreadable" but it doesn't have to be so. Haskell, for example, is in fact quite a bit more concise then Perl (except in the most trivial of cases), but very readable even if you don't know the language.<br><br /><hr />Missed the show? Watch videos of the Live Earth Concert on MSN. <a href='http://liveearth.msn.com' target='_new'>See them now!</a></body>
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