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You might want to glance at the article, which is about Turing machine busy beaver programs and has nothing to do with spaghetti code as a development practice.

by kens 5y ago

fshbbdssbbgdd 5y ago
What hacker news needs is a separate “discuss title” page.
- infogulch 5y ago
  There are several identifiable categories of common HN commentary: discuss name/title, discuss UI/UX, impromptu ama with the author, everyone dumping their sightly related weird pet theory, unreasonably entertaining anecdotes, 101 q&a on the general domain, field experts with long winded objections over minutae but agreeing with the main thrust of the article, someone learning why HN is not reddit, complaining about downvotes, really good summaries, and maybe even a discussion on the content of the article (what a time to be alive!). Labeling comments would enable you to filter out stuff you're not interested in reading, but I don't think a separate page is the answer.
derangedHorse 5y ago
Why would you assume this is off-topic? The article is not only about "Turing machine busy beaver programs" but also aims to define "spaghetti code" in a more general sense. In the first paragraph the author says "What’s needed is a formal theory of spaghetti code: an effective procedure that will determine of a given Turing machine program whether (or to what extent) the program is spaghetti". Note the statement 'given Turing machine program'. It doesn't seem to be scoped to only busy beaver programs. Also note the author's different usages of 'spaghetti code' and the 'Spaghetti Code Conjecture' indicating the discussion of each being different topics. This is further noted by the fact that the author brings the conversation back to the 'Spaghetti Code Conjecture' by writing "With all this in mind, we can restate the Spaghetti Code Conjecture formally: the control flow graph of (sufficiently long) Busy Beaver programs ought to be at least partially irreducible." With all that said, it seems the original commentator in this thread was discussing the definition of spaghetti code ("In particular, a graph that cannot be reduced at all can be considered utter spaghetti and a graph that can be eliminated completely can be considered thoroughly well-structured.") in relation to the states of a program. Building on the fact spaghetti code can (and has) been observed by the original commentator, they related the discussion of states to the development practice of using multiple flags (which leads to various states in a program)

You might want to glance at the article, which is about Turing machine busy beaver programs and has nothing to do with spaghetti code as a development practice.

by kens 5y ago

You might want to glance at the article, which is about Turing machine busy beaver programs and has nothing to do with spaghetti code as a development practice.

fshbbdssbbgdd 5y ago

What hacker news needs is a separate “discuss title” page.

infogulch 5y ago
There are several identifiable categories of common HN commentary: discuss name/title, discuss UI/UX, impromptu ama with the author, everyone dumping their sightly related weird pet theory, unreasonably entertaining anecdotes, 101 q&a on the general domain, field experts with long winded objections over minutae but agreeing with the main thrust of the article, someone learning why HN is not reddit, complaining about downvotes, really good summaries, and maybe even a discussion on the content of the article (what a time to be alive!). Labeling comments would enable you to filter out stuff you're not interested in reading, but I don't think a separate page is the answer.

derangedHorse 5y ago

Why would you assume this is off-topic? The article is not only about "Turing machine busy beaver programs" but also aims to define "spaghetti code" in a more general sense. In the first paragraph the author says "What’s needed is a formal theory of spaghetti code: an effective procedure that will determine of a given Turing machine program whether (or to what extent) the program is spaghetti". Note the statement 'given Turing machine program'. It doesn't seem to be scoped to only busy beaver programs. Also note the author's different usages of 'spaghetti code' and the 'Spaghetti Code Conjecture' indicating the discussion of each being different topics. This is further noted by the fact that the author brings the conversation back to the 'Spaghetti Code Conjecture' by writing "With all this in mind, we can restate the Spaghetti Code Conjecture formally: the control flow graph of (sufficiently long) Busy Beaver programs ought to be at least partially irreducible." With all that said, it seems the original commentator in this thread was discussing the definition of spaghetti code ("In particular, a graph that cannot be reduced at all can be considered utter spaghetti and a graph that can be eliminated completely can be considered thoroughly well-structured.") in relation to the states of a program. Building on the fact spaghetti code can (and has) been observed by the original commentator, they related the discussion of states to the development practice of using multiple flags (which leads to various states in a program)