• Simple is Forth.
• Correct is ML.
• Consistent is Lisp.
• Complete is Ada.
• Fast is C.

Beauty is Perl -- there's more than one way to see it.

A fast program is just as important as a correct one--False! It's hardly ever true that programs need to be fast or small before they need to be correct. Gerald Weinberg tells the story of a programmer who was flown to Detroit to help debug a program that was in trouble. The programmer worked with the team of programmers who had developed the program, and after several days he concluded that the situation was hopeless.

On the flight home, he mulled over the last few days and realized the true problem. By the end of the flight, he had outlined the necessary code. He tested it for several days and was about to return to Detroit when he got a telegram saying the project had been cancelled because the program was impossible to write. He headed back to Detroit anyway and convinced the executives that the project could be completed.

He then had to convince the project's original programmers. They listened to his presentation, and when he'd finished, the creator of the old system asked,

"And how long does your program take?"

"That varies, but about ten seconds per input."

"Aha! But my program takes only one second per input." The veteran leaned back, satisfied that he'd stumped the upstart programmer. The other programmers seemed to agree, but the new programmer wasn't intimidated.

"Yes, but your program doesn't work. If mine doesn't have to work, I can make it run instantly and take up no memory. "

-- Mike

--
just,my${.02}

truth? beauty?


Information is not knowledge
knowledge is not wisdom
wisdom is not truth
truth is not beauty
beauty is not love
love is not music
music is the best

(Frank Zappa)

Sorry, couldn't resist ;^)

weini

...actually, I think my definition of "beautiful" is simple, correct, consistent, and complete. (Also see "tensegrity")

...All the world looks like -well- all the world, when your hammer is Perl.
---v

A table for two, candel light, soft piano music in the background. Says he:
"Oh, my darling, you are so simple, correct, consistent, and complete tonight!"

SCR (=Sorry, couldn't resist)

Here Here!! Although I would prefer the term "elegant", at least in regards to code.

It also made sense to Keats. Maybe you're a Romantic at heart.


`Beauty is truth, truth beauty, -- that is all
          Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'
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Ode on a Grecian Urn, John Keats, 1819.

I just noticed your signature quote

Ode on a Grecian Urn

links to a page on the Dundee University (Scotland) website, which is where I studied art, and currently take Saturday classes in Chinese.
coincidence?

update:Thanks ronald - I knew it wasn't a signature - don't know why i wrote that!

Maybe it's because we're both artists.
Romantic? I do try, but usually fail.

Beauty as well, though I guess more correctly "elegance".

It is sad that we now have "top" and bottom" instead of "truth" and "beauty" (quarks). (Of course I also disagree with the RGB system ;-)

--
perl -pew "s/\b;([mnst])/'$1/g"

#!/usr/bin/perl
0;
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MMM... fast, simple, beautiful.

Almost certainly wrong.

--
Tommy
Too stupid to live.
Too stubborn to die.

Except that under the common UNIX convention, a returned zero is TRUE, and any other result is false. This comes from C coders setting bit flags to indicate the error (so anything > 0 indicates a error flag has been set).

Larry Wall was a bit of a rebel when he selected zero as false. It is a constant gripe of C programmers converting to perl: "Your error return values are the other way around, and that confuses my tiny, C programming brain".

Note: I've been programming too long - I almost added a \n so that sentence looked like: "...C programming brain\n". Somebody help me!

____________________
Jeremy
I didn't believe in evil until I dated it.

Funny; I code my tests. :)

That leaves me with a choice between: Consistent, Fast, My Nose or Another Job.

I voted Consistent, as that will leave me with the best options when any of the other points need correcting.

I blame "Business-Logic" because it's neither

-- 
Joost       downtime n. The period during which a system
            is error-free and immune from user input.
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--
Until you've lost your reputation, you never realize what a burden it was or what freedom really is. -Margaret Mitchell

Agreed. A beautiful solution has to be correct (else it's flawed) Beauty is often found in simple things, done right. And beauty makes the more complex things more pleasant. :)

err, or my nose.

Two for the price of one, plus a dollar! (ok, no dollar but still...)

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
- Jim
Insert clever comment here...

In theory, something can be completely incorrect ;)

--
$rattusillegitimus = Eliza::PerlMonks::Robot::new()

Like the original mirror for the Hubble Space Telescope, polished to an astonishing level of perfection... to the wrong shape... ;-)

I chose "beautiful", because code is beautiful when it's simple, correct, consistant, complete and fast. Even my nose and my job may be considered beautiful :)

^~Django
"Why don't we ever challenge the spherical earth theory?"

So yes, I voted "correct". The other qualities are nice too, but worth nothing, when the first one, correctness, isn't satisfied.

All that is under the assumption that a program can be correct, that there is a solution, of course. An exception to this rule would be a program to play chess, for example. For such a case, "simple", "complete", "beautiful", "fast", all these would be more important than the holy grail, "correct". Then, it should merely have to produce acceptable results. Fast.

I voted "correct". The other qualities are nice too, but worth nothing, when the first one, correctness, isn't satisfied.

Incorrect can't be beautiful. Incorrect is just plain ugly to me.

("Beautiful" got my vote.)

— Arien

Barely correct software allows the user to get the job done -- barely. Truly correct software allows the user to get the job done with ease, and maybe even pleasure!

Correct software isn't perfect or bug free, but it's close enough. Unreleased software is useless and couldn't possibly be less correct. The trick is judging what's "close enough".

"Correctness" is the most important attribute for software, but for me, "simplicity" is a very strong second. Lots of good things fall out of simplifying software -- it's easier to read, test, understand, and maintain. And that, IMHO, is beautiful.

laughingboy

I'm sat here wondering what a "Nose Job" is...

cLive ;-)

--
seek(JOB,$$LA,0);

In the last 2 polls I have been told that I have already voted from this IP. I am voting from a static home address, so I know I hadn't. Am I only allowed to vote in one poll ever?

spending my time on the report I have to submit tomorrow, instead of procrastinating by typing me-too posts.

I voted for the first time three polls ago and was also not allowed to vote anymore after that. Plus the vote script also seems to use $ENV{REMOTE_ADDR} when it really should be using $ENV{HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR} if present.

Right now for every corporate/University network running for a single proxy, only one person can vote. But a dialup user can easily vote multiple times since he'll probably have a different IP adress each time he's logged in.

I propose using the user name for the poll vote status.

Indeed. This same thing has been happening to me. It has happened to me the last few times I've voted. I have been chalking it up to being behind a proxy, thus allowing only one of the three PM members at work here to vote. Perhaps I was wrong, though. I believe I was the first one to vote out of our little group here, today, and I still received the message that I had already voted.

bug?

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
- Jim
Insert clever comment here...

Correct of course.

If the code is correct, I won't ever have to look at, and even though beauty et al will go unnoticed, I'll say its wonderful just the same!

Consistency would be next on my list. I struggled between it and beauty but decided that consistency is a prerequisite for beauty. You might find a gem in a pile of manure but no one in their right mind would enjoy the search.

-sauoq
"My two cents aren't worth a dime.";

/jeorgen

adamsj

They laughed at Joan of Arc, but she went right ahead and built it. --Gracie Allen

You can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your friends nose...

and also, picking your nose when noone is looking is still picking yournose.

these don't have bearing on anything of value, but I just thought I had the right to post them :)

---

work it harder make it better do it faster makes us stronger more than ever hour after our work is never over.

i cannot see why programming in a "simple" way corresponds to a long term view. for me long term means that the capabilities of the code basis on which the scripts work is so adaptable that it need not be changed for a long time. this of course adds some complexity to the scripts but you can't avoid it. if you can manage that they keep simple then i consider the design beautiful - parallels to perl are not unintended ;)

----
NaSe
:x

Hehheh. You must've voted in the previous poll, about the appropriate username. Nase... that's pretty funny if I remember my German lessons correctly :-)

Lur: "But if this cape shrinks, consider your species extinct!"

Hm. The old saying goes,

You can pick your friends,
And you can pick your nose,
But you can't pick your friends's nose.

I guess this disproves it. ;-)

--
RatArsed

There are two ways of constructing a software design. One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies. And the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. --C.A.R. Hoare

But then I figured the poll mean fast as in benchmarking the results.

So I voted for the first option coz that was faster than reading through them all again.

Simple
Correct
Consistent
Complete
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