[racket] OFFTOPIC - Quote on Programming

I think "clever" here is meant in the "smart-ass" sense.

Let me take this smart-ass definition to be measured by how much you write
"compressed" code (in the sense of Kolmogorov complexity, which
incomputability fits well with the cleverness).
You have a compression function C: Program -> Program which compresses a
program to the best /you/ can in reasonable time.
So we have, for any program p you write, the length l(p) is greater or
equal to the length l(C(p)).
Now say you are able to debug a program p only if l(p) > C(p) + N bits (we
are in log scale, so addition instead of twice).
Then if you compress a program to the most /you/ can, i.e. you write a
program p so that l(p) = C(p), then you're screwed for debugging it.

I.e., between "Never write the same code twice" and "Compress your programs
as much as possible", there's a line one should not cross.

Laurent


On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 6:20 AM, Jos Koot <jos.koot at gmail.com> wrote:

> **
> Well, that may depend on how you define "clever code". Surely it is clever
> to write well documented code that can easily be understood, debugged,
> maintained and reused by yourself and by others. Understanding may require
> knowledge of the discipline the code is written for, of course. In my
> opinion it helps a lot first finishing the documentation and the
> design (both user and 'inside' docs) before starting coding. With good and
> well described design it is even possible to leave the coding to another
> person, just like an architect designs a building and constructors build it.
> My 2c, Jos
>
>  ------------------------------
> *From:* users-bounces at racket-lang.org [mailto:
> users-bounces at racket-lang.org] *On Behalf Of *Harry Spier
> *Sent:* martes, 19 de marzo de 2013 2:56
> *To:* users
> *Subject:* [racket] OFFTOPIC - Quote on Programming
>
>  I found this quote on a blog and couldn't help sharing it :-)
>
> "Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.
>  Therefore if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are by
> definition not smart enough to debug it." Brian Kernigan
>
>
> ____________________
>   Racket Users list:
>   http://lists.racket-lang.org/users
>
>
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