Re^5: Perl Golf Ethics

[runrig]

I spent 3 all nighters, and then some, coming up with my answer, getting down to 203, and enjoyed the time I spent on it. I wondered (but then gave up) about getting even a t-shirt out of it. Then I saw this thread and eventually found ton's code, and half an answer to the problem. And had some more fun trying to golf down the other half. My daughter even helped in choosing characters to use for variable names ("try a sqiggle there...")...I told her she could have the t-shirt if I won :-)

Without ton's code, I would have gotten 31st, which would still have been a pretty darn respectable position, and yes, you would have beaten me(28th!), and my hat's off to you for that, but neither of us would have won a prize. I do wonder how many used ton's code (or some other from the same source), and how we all would have done if that were not the case (it's all published, so someone could pretty easily figure it out). I am grateful to PerlMonks though, for the leg up :-) I'm sorry you feel it was a waste of time :-(

I really wish there could be a contest for good code, based on efficiency, maintainability, etc, but then of course it wouldn't be as easy to score :-)