Talk:Quine: Difference between revisions
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::: While the question that Quine investigated implies the quote-interpreting solution, the definition of the problem (per Wikipedia, anyway), doesn't require it. Reading it over, I'll agree that the Lisp example doesn't demonstrate anything one wouldn't get from [[Empty Program]], and would be better replaced with the Scheme/Common Lisp example from the Wikipedia page. I'd have no problem modifying the task description to discard empty programs as trivial, or even requiring the program to use a human-readable output method. Still, the task can still serve to compare languages. Some languages make accessing the source simple, like in the Forth example, or the JavaScript example on the Wikipedia page. Even the string-modifying solution allows for differences between languages; Different languages have different best solutions for replacing a substring. |
::: While the question that Quine investigated implies the quote-interpreting solution, the definition of the problem (per Wikipedia, anyway), doesn't require it. Reading it over, I'll agree that the Lisp example doesn't demonstrate anything one wouldn't get from [[Empty Program]], and would be better replaced with the Scheme/Common Lisp example from the Wikipedia page. I'd have no problem modifying the task description to discard empty programs as trivial, or even requiring the program to use a human-readable output method. Still, the task can still serve to compare languages. Some languages make accessing the source simple, like in the Forth example, or the JavaScript example on the Wikipedia page. Even the string-modifying solution allows for differences between languages; Different languages have different best solutions for replacing a substring. |
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::: It's not a 1:1 technique comparison, but neither is any task with both functional and procedural language examples. Would you be reasonably satisified if the task was changed to require human-readable output and exclude empty programs? --[[User:Short Circuit|Short Circuit]] 21:35, 21 November 2007 (MST) |
::: It's not a 1:1 technique comparison, but neither is any task with both functional and procedural language examples. Would you be reasonably satisified if the task was changed to require human-readable output and exclude empty programs? --[[User:Short Circuit|Short Circuit]] 21:35, 21 November 2007 (MST) |
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:::: The problem with Wikipedia of course is that it is great to get a rough feeling for some topic, but it's neither precise nor authoritative. So it's dangerous to take some definition there literally and insist it's the "correct" one - using the context to determine the ''ideas'' is much more appropriate for Wikipedia. |
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:::: It's true that this task exposes (a) access to source code and (b) ways to modify strings, but considering the amount of misunderstanding this task generates, I still think it is much better (and more informative) to handle those on pages of their own. Especially (a) could only benefit from greater detail. Languages like Forth, Smalltalk, Lisp and Tcl have interesting ways to access and modify code at runtime, but you need a code example to bring this out. A Quine isn't one. |
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:::: I've expanded the task description with some background to better explain the "spirit", and required the "canonical" version as one of the code examples. I've also ruled out constant expressions, and replaced your Lisp version with the one from Wikipedia. If you've objections or improvements, feel free to modify it. [[User:Dirkt|Dirkt]] 03:43, 22 November 2007 (MST) |
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