I agree with Paul Graham that terseness is, in general, a good thing, and that quick-and-dirty options are useful in exploratory programming. Both of these are reasons I use Perl, after all.

However, I don't quite see what a golfing challenge proves. Golfing is not about getting code working quickly, it's about wasting hours trying to make your program that one little bit more concise. But in exploratory programming, the key question is not "how concise is my program?", but "how long did it take to get it working?" (closely followed by "can I actually remember what that clever bit does?")

Which raises the question: is the Arc program Mr Graham provides really a typical example of what an average programmer using Arc might naturally produce during an exploratory session, or is it golfed?

In reply to Re^3: Take the Arc Challenge by Porculus
in thread Take the Arc Challenge by kyle

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.