7 ms·

If you start with code golf, as you did, then this is where you end up. The only way to win is not to play?

• 38 3y ago
  mine is just normal idiomatic Go code. thats not true of the C code.
  • inferiorhuman 3y ago
    It might be ugly, but that is idiomatic C code. C didn't even have boolean types until C99, and even then it's an "extension" of an integer type. You could argue about the loop itself, after all K&R specified "for(;;)", but the other commonly used (ergo idiomatic) infinite loops use precisely the same number of lines. "while(1)" is a perfectly idiomatic manner to create an infinite loop. Likewise a void return type for main was entirely legal until C99. The BSD yes(1) I've laying around only prints the first argument, so flag parsing? What flag parsing? Yes in nine lines of C inclusive of preprocessor macro invocations and white space. #include <stdio.h> int main(int argc, char **argv) { const char *phrase = argc > 1 ? argv[1] : "y"; while (1) { printf("%s\n", phrase); } return 0; }
    • 38 3y ago
      I don't see proper flag parsing, I see an argv hack.
      • inferiorhuman 3y ago
        There are no flags in yes(1) ergo there's no need for "flag parsing". yes(1) takes one optional string as input, and that's exactly what argv provides. I'm not sure what you think "flag parsing" is bringing to the table here, but checking the array of command line parameters and accessing an element is pretty far from a hack. If it's more comfortable you can also declare argv as an array of character arrays e.g. char *[], but that won't change the line count.
        • 38 3y ago
          It's a lose for C either way. Either it cant parse flags, or we remove that requirement, and my code goes from 9 lines to 6.
          • rcr 3y ago
            Who cares though? We get it, you prefer golang, congrats?
            • 38 3y ago
              I am not seeing a technical argument here against the previous points, only one against the commenter: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
              • rcr 3y ago
                But you're also arguing in bad faith. Your go code is shorter, okay, but it doesn't do the same thing as the GNU yes code, so what point are you trying to make? I can also link to philosophy 101 wikipedia articles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man
                • 38 3y ago
                  I think I have made it pretty clear already, but here it is again: the Go code has MORE functionality (flag parsing) with LESS code. yes its not as fast, and yes the executable is larger, but for many, thats a good tradeoff for the extra standard library features, and the reduced LOC/code complexity. sadly as of yet, I haven't seen any cogent technical arguments against my points thus far.
                  • rcr 3y ago
                    For an extremely simple utility like the 'yes' command that is compiled and distributed as a binary to trillions of installations what metric do you consider more important, size and speed? Or lines of code in the source? Think about this in engineering terms, everything is a tradeoff and it's your job to come up with the best solution. I'm genuinely curious to hear your argument.