in reply to Re^2: How do you define "elegant"?
in thread How do you define "elegant"?

Wikipedia says
... a computer program or algorithm is elegant if it uses a small amount of intuitive code to great effect.
Pretty much hits the nail on the head, I think.


holli, /regexed monk/

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Re^4: How do you define "elegant"?
by Jenda (Abbot) on Aug 16, 2006 at 13:37 UTC

    Define "intuitive"! We are exactly where we were. What's intuitive?

    IMHO, beauty, elegance and intuitivity (or whatever's the correct spelling in English) are all in the eye of the beholder. What's perfectly intuitive to me is bound to be counterintuitive or plainly a big meaningless mess to someone else.

    Jenda
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[reply]

      To further complicate things, intuition is not just in the eye of the beholder, it's also context-sensitive.

      For example, someone might normally expect 8 to follow the series 5,6,7, but he'd expect 10 (the octal representation of 8) when reading a VARASM listing.

[reply]

In Section Meditations