Talk:Langton's ant: Difference between revisions
→Chirality?
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::: I'd argue that a rotation is still correct, but that the Ada solution is ''technically'' wrong (because the implementation uses the wrong information to act). Mind you, mere renaming of the variables should not be enough to invalidate a solution, so solutions which are of the wrong handedness because of exchanging x/y are also correct (except for the display code, which is not the focus of the task). –[[User:Dkf|Donal Fellows]] 07:08, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
::::Well, it could be argued that right and left have no meaning without an observer outside the plane, which makes the display code rather more important. In which case you should counter-argue that the "wrong" chirality is merely observing the graph from underneath. But I'm not trying to be a troublemaker. It's just that I was trained in chemistry, where the wrong stereoisomer can have results like Thalidamide. Or if you're lucky, you just end up up with the difference between spearmint flavor and caraway flavor, which are stereoisomers. So maybe I'm just overly sensitive on the subject. Chemists don't deal in abstractions, so they aren't generally taught to say "That wasn't the focus of my task." <tt>:-)</tt>
: Nit or not, updated Perl 5 code to correct the chirality. Output now matches Wikipedia image. Also made similar mod to Perl 6 and exchanged x/y in output code so they have the more traditional interpretation while maintaining correct chirality. Thanks, Larry. --[[User:Markjreed|Markjreed]] 23:14, 11 March 2012 (UTC)
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