I think the challenge needs to be viewed in the context of what Paul Graham considers Arc to be. He calls it a medium for sketching software and says it's an exploratory programming tool.

He goes on to say that exploratory programming is a good place for terseness and quick-and-dirty approaches to encapsulation and other language features. He says this is in clear contrast to large-scale programming by large teams.

Given the specific goals of making an application quicker to rough in, run, and edit I can see why there's so much focus on brevity. When you're just looking for a skeleton and a little bit of guts, you don't always want to mess with the skin and clothing.

In reply to Re^2: Take the Arc Challenge by mr_mischief
in thread Take the Arc Challenge by kyle

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