Talk:Old lady swallowed a fly: Difference between revisions
Content added Content deleted
(→“Where's my cow?”: Partial agreement, initial source of task, interest in task's results.) |
|||
| Line 104: | Line 104: | ||
::::::::: Computational work, sure. It's the illustration of the process that I find interesting. --[[User:Short Circuit|Michael Mol]] 13:50, 31 August 2011 (UTC) |
::::::::: Computational work, sure. It's the illustration of the process that I find interesting. --[[User:Short Circuit|Michael Mol]] 13:50, 31 August 2011 (UTC) |
||
::::::(deindent) Well, that's what I was saying: using a module you didn't write to do the decompression doesn't illustrate anything more than calling a shell command does, since the dirty work is hidden from view anyway. Once you decide to use deflate or bzip2, all you know is the uuencoded string will become some incomprehensible binary hodgepodge that a library somewhere will decode for you, I really don't see a difference whether the lib is invoked by Module::Inflate or /bin/unzip. --[[User:Ledrug|Ledrug]] 15:49, 31 August 2011 (UTC) |
::::::(deindent) Well, that's what I was saying: using a module you didn't write to do the decompression doesn't illustrate anything more than calling a shell command does, since the dirty work is hidden from view anyway. Once you decide to use deflate or bzip2, all you know is the uuencoded string will become some incomprehensible binary hodgepodge that a library somewhere will decode for you, I really don't see a difference whether the lib is invoked by Module::Inflate or /bin/unzip. --[[User:Ledrug|Ledrug]] 15:49, 31 August 2011 (UTC) |
||
::::::: Which I agree isn't as interesting. Currently, the C, D and PicoLisp examples rate higher than the Tcl, Python and Perl examples in terms of what I find interesting and illustrative for compression algorithms. Tcl, Python and Perl examples are illustrative of packing data into source code. While I don't think this task is particularly successful yet (the examples should probably be subclassified for the direction of their solution--compression, semantic assembly or some other technique.), the examples noted do raise interesting ideas for other tasks. Again, I particularly like how the C, D and PicoLisp's examples data is readable and recognizable prior to decompression. I'd be interested in seeing a task that used that property to illustrate the compression and decompression sides of a compression algorithm. (Though perhaps the 99 Bottles of Beer song would be a better basis). As for the direction Tcl, Perl and Python took, there's probably use for a task explicitly invoking that behavior in a program; it bears some resemblance to self-extracting programs which serve as the basis for the installers for many software programs. --[[User:Short Circuit|Michael Mol]] |
|||
:::::::I created the task on a whim. It was somewhat like dropping a grain of sand into a supersaturated solution; it's very interesting and inspiring looking at the different kinds of things that are precipitating. --[[User:Short Circuit|Michael Mol]] 17:09, 31 August 2011 (UTC) |
|||
This section shares only a title with [http://www.amazon.co.uk/Wheres-My-Cow-Discworld-Picture/dp/038560937X this] book by an excellent author. |
This section shares only a title with [http://www.amazon.co.uk/Wheres-My-Cow-Discworld-Picture/dp/038560937X this] book by an excellent author. |
||