Comments on: Why You Shouldn’t Be Clever http://www.johnmyleswhite.com/notebook/2008/08/20/why-you-shouldnt-be-clever/ "He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense." Thu, 09 Feb 2012 17:17:15 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: John Myles White http://www.johnmyleswhite.com/notebook/2008/08/20/why-you-shouldnt-be-clever/comment-page-1/#comment-17466 John Myles White Wed, 03 Sep 2008 02:26:31 +0000 http://www.johnmyleswhite.com/?p=3092#comment-17466 I'm glad you liked this post, Jason. I agree that clever code using clever algorithms is great, so long as it's still readable. An amazing example is the regular expression parser featured in the first chapter of O'Reilly's Beautiful Code. I also think that more sophisticated languages like Prolog, Haskell or even Ruby allow people to write clever, but understandable, code more easily. And, yes, I'm sure that the overhead of using a regex in the algorithm is a major source of the poor performance, though even an implementation just using direct comparisons of substrings would take longer. If you've got Ruby on one of your machines, just try the example calculation with both algorithms above. I can never bring myself to let the first bit of code continue for more than thirty seconds, while the second bit finishes in less than a second. I’m glad you liked this post, Jason. I agree that clever code using clever algorithms is great, so long as it’s still readable. An amazing example is the regular expression parser featured in the first chapter of O’Reilly’s Beautiful Code. I also think that more sophisticated languages like Prolog, Haskell or even Ruby allow people to write clever, but understandable, code more easily.

And, yes, I’m sure that the overhead of using a regex in the algorithm is a major source of the poor performance, though even an implementation just using direct comparisons of substrings would take longer. If you’ve got Ruby on one of your machines, just try the example calculation with both algorithms above. I can never bring myself to let the first bit of code continue for more than thirty seconds, while the second bit finishes in less than a second.

]]> By: Jason http://www.johnmyleswhite.com/notebook/2008/08/20/why-you-shouldnt-be-clever/comment-page-1/#comment-17465 Jason Wed, 03 Sep 2008 01:58:22 +0000 http://www.johnmyleswhite.com/?p=3092#comment-17465 I really like this article, and it is a good example of someone trying to save line space at the price of efficiency. However, clever code that uses clever algorithms and techniques is really wonderful when you see it. I found this quite common when working with small problems in prolog and haskell. Also, I image the overhead of using a regex in that algorithm was partially responsible for the poor performance. I really like this article, and it is a good example of someone trying to save line space at the price of efficiency.

However, clever code that uses clever algorithms and techniques is really wonderful when you see it. I found this quite common when working with small problems in prolog and haskell.

Also, I image the overhead of using a regex in that algorithm was partially responsible for the poor performance.

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