4 ms·
Ha! That's hilarious! I'm sure a lot of people remember the old joke: -can you assume that any program out there can be reduce by one line? -can you assume th
by dorfsmay 13y ago
Ha! That's hilarious! I'm sure a lot of people remember the old joke:
-can you assume that any program out there can be reduce by one line?
-can you assume that any program out there has a least one bug?
If yes, it means that, by mathematical induction, every program can be reduce to one zero byte, and it's buggy!
- anonymous 13y agoWhich means that the first two assumptions are wrong, leading us to conclude that there exist minimal perfect programs for every specification.
- Falling3 13y agoNo. If we negative dorfsmay's premises, it still does not lead to your conclusion.
- dmoney 13y agoThere's a bug in this zero-byte program: the other program might not leave its memory in a correctly runnable state when it shuts down.
- dorfsmay 13y agoQ.E.D.!!!
- nathan_long 13y agoThe issue is whether "any program out there" is taken to mean "any existing" or "any possible". It may be true that no programs actually exist that couldn't be shorter or more correct (though I doubt it), but one would reach a minimum length and bugginess eventually.
- spc476 13y agoIEFBR14 was a one-byte program from IBM that had a bug. The history of the program makes for some cool reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEFBR14 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEFBR14
- dorfsmay 13y agoPlease note, this is a joke, don't argue with it too seriously. Also it's not my joke, it was floating around in usenet days.