OT: Crazy Programming

[Mike Coleman]

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
absolutely awful in terms of readability, maintainability, etc.  This may be
orthogonal or even somewhat in line with the Perl ethos, but I see it as
fairly antithetical to that of Python.

If one wanted to measure brief programs in Python, they should be measured in
(say) tokens rather than bytes, to at least allow for this difference.

As you say, if you want to measure elegance, you'd probably need to judge it
or vote on it.

Mike