[REBOL] Re: A Rebol Challenge. The Monty Hall Puzzle
From: joel:neely:fedex at: 17-Dec-2001 12:27
Hi, Sunanda,
[SunandaDH--aol--com] wrote:
> I completely agree that a highly compressed program isn't often a
> great way to win an argument. But (just to defend myself for a
> moment) ...
>
No defense necessary (except perhaps on my part for poor choice of
wording -- perhaps I should have said "inferences" or "conclusions"
instead of "assumptions")! All I meant was that several of the very
compact solutions were the *result* of reasoning about the problem,
rather than a *record* of the reasoning process itself. In such a
situation, a skeptical audience simply shifts its skepticism to the
program itself, rather than having its skepticism relieved.
> The best test of a programming language isn't how compact a program
> it can write, but (I would claim) how easy it is to write maintain-
> able programs in it. But even that tests mainly the design skills
> and long-term vision of the programmer.
>
Per your following discussion, I believe we'd agree that "ability to
guess -- most of the time -- what is likely to change in the future"
is an important part of "long-term vision".
> A good test of all of our (and Perl and Matlab) solutions is how
> easily can they be modified as various "real world" changes are
> required. Almost by definition, we can't know what our programs
> will face over there lifetimes, but here are a few of the sort of
> things that might beset a Monty simulator:
>
...
> I can see how my solution will naturally extend for some of these;
> can be bodged into shape for others; and would be scrapped and
> rewritten for the rest. And that's programming!
>
A *VERY* interesting and thought-provoking list! Thanks!
-jn-
