4 ms·
The length of the program isn't necessarily correlated with the amount of time it takes to write it, or more importantly, understand it ;)
by asQuirreL 12y ago
The length of the program isn't necessarily correlated with the amount of time it takes to write it, or more importantly, understand it ;)
- micheljansen 12y agoI believe that's the joke: "I wanted to write a short computer program but didn't have the time (so I wrote a long program instead)".
- konmik 12y agoIt is not a joke. Optimization takes time.
- IgorPartola 12y agoAs the foremost domain expert on the subject (the subject being what I meant by my own comment), I can say with 100% certainty that it was in fact a joke, or rather a poor attempt to paraphrase Mark Twain's: "I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead." Of course you are right, optimization does take time, whether you are optimizing a computer program or a letter.
- dang 12y agoNot Twain, Pascal: http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/ http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/. But yes—just as applicable to computer programming as letter writing.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- Igglyboo 12y agoIt is a joke. Things that are shorter or smaller generally take less time to produce than things that are longer or larger, it's a joke because the opposite is true in this case. Jokes can be true statements as well as falsehoods.