The Arc Challenge in Ruby

http://blog.directededge.com/2009/12/19/the-arc-challenge-in-ruby/

by wheels • 17 years ago

25 7 17 years ago

blog.directededge.com

jamesbritt• 17 years ago

So, just how much code can I hide in a 3rd-party library or framework before the LOC count begins?

That Ruby example clearly will not work without a bunch code (i.e., the whole of Sinatra) that's not shown, and is not part of Ruby's std-lib.

See:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1005162

but also

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1005155

antirez• 17 years ago

In the first place the rule that all the libs should be standard libs is non sensical from the point of view of comparing languages power, so I think we can safely suppress it and still consider the attempts valid.

Proof: if you want to measure the power of a language with this test, enforcing that everything should be in the standard lib, and a language fails at it, adding some code to the standard lib will change the power of the language, but this is not possible because the syntax, semantic and behavior of a language (i.e the language itself) is not changed by additions to the standard library.

houseabsolute• 17 years ago

But if you look at it another way, a significant portion of what's used in the arc examples would not reach the bar of what's included in the standard libs of some other languages. The fact is that what is in the standard lib of a language is a totally arbitrary decision, and measuring any language's power in a way that's dependent on whether or not a necessary library is in the standard lib is silly.

The real test should be, "How short can you make this code using libraries available for the language which would be generally useful working on some other task as well."

The Arc Challenge in Ruby

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