in reply to Re^4: Perl Golf Ethics
in thread Perl Golf Ethics

it rankles me that I spent over a week on a contest that I thought was a challenge of cleverness and coding skill, not research and being in-the-know
Sorry Andy, but that's rubbish. With more cleverness and coding skill you could have easily gone 50 strokes lower, as, for example, ambrus did -- he posted a 137 in just one day, with little prior golfing experience and without knowing Ton's magic algorithm.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^6: Perl Golf Ethics
by petdance (Parson) on Jan 04, 2007 at 15:07 UTC
    I'm not saying that I couldn't have done better. I'm saying that the key to actually winning was happening to know that there was a secret.
[reply]

      the key to actually winning was happening to know that there was a secret
      It wasn't a secret to the winner. ;-) So I think justice was served there. And who can prove that Ton's magic formula is the final word? It's just possible someone might have invented a more magical formula than Ton and out-Ton-ed Ton. I know I tried. :-) Update: it turns out a more magical formula was indeed available all along!

      Seriously though, I agree with you that it was unfortunate that Fonality chose a problem where knowing of a previous similar golf gave a significant advantage. They didn't do it on purpose and I'm sure if they'd have known, they would have set a different problem. Having said that, I still enjoyed golfing on the non-magic-formula parts of the problem and found that to be challenging-in-the-extreme ... to the point of melting my brain at times. :-)

[reply]
      A reply falls below the community's threshold of quality. You may see it by logging in.
      No actually. There was a second way of winning: make up your own secret. Nothing stops anyone from thinking of the magic formula for himself. It's also perfectly possible there is an even better way to go from number to roman that nobody discovered yet.

      And if a person would also have found the magic formula if he hadn't known the existing one, I don't think you can say he got an unfair advantage from it. I know I would have found it, and Juho might or might not have, but at least he has come up with magic formulas before. And third place was easily possible without the magic formula.

      And let's be very clear that all this was an accident. When making up golf challenges, one tries very hard to come up with new ones where old golfs cannot be reused. Nobody wants a perl golf where the real work consists of searching the web instead of programming.

[reply]

        There was a second way of winning: make up your own secret. Nothing stops anyone from thinking of the magic formula for himself. It's also perfectly possible there is an even better way to go from number to roman that nobody discovered yet.

        For the record, Ton was proved right - a better formula was indeed available, as beautifully demonstrated by primo.

[reply]
        Nobody wants a perl golf where the real work consists of searching the web instead of programming.

        Which was my entire point from the beginning.

        xoxo,
        Andy

[reply]
          A reply falls below the community's threshold of quality. You may see it by logging in.

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom