OT: Crazy Programming

[David K. Trudgett]

On Sunday 2002-05-12 at 14:06:07 -0500, Mike Coleman wrote:

> Oleg Broytmann <phd at phd.pp.ru> writes:
> >    BTW, the idea of Perl Golf is interesting, but unapplied to Python. It
> > is possible to write short ugly programs in Python, but I would not to make
> > them the goal of a contest.
> >    I'd better see a contest for "Python elegance", but unfortunately
> > "elegance" is hard (though not impossible) to measure.
> 
> That was my thought exactly.  It's kind of a cool idea, but measuring the
> wrong thing.  The shortest programs may have hack value, but they're

It's just a bit of fun, of course, like doing cryptic crosswords. Perl
happens to be great for doing stuff like that. Python isn't. It's as
simple as that. To say that these programs "aren't readable,
maintainable" etc is most amusing in itself, because that is not the
purpose of these little "hacklets" (hey, I think I just (re?)invented
a word).

If you want readable, use Python by all means (although Perl can be
just as readable). An interesting observation is this: the difference
between the beginner's Python code and the expert's Python code is
less than the difference between the beginner's Perl code and the
expert's Perl code. This is actually the origin of "Python is more
readable", which it is. It's difficult to write unintelligible code in
Python (though I'm sure it's possible -- there are people with lots of
talent out there ;-)), whereas, it's relatively easy in Perl.


David Trudgett