A quick c.l.p netiquette question

[Peter Corbett]

I've written a program to illustrate a few... syntactic issues with
Python. It's 158 <80 character lines long.

About how short should a program be to be postable to this newsgroup -
in other words, at what length should you stick it on a web page and
post a link?

Peter

 

[skip]

Peter> About how short should a program be to be postable to this
Peter> newsgroup - in other words, at what length should you stick it on
Peter> a web page and post a link?

158 lines is probably not a killer. However, consider what misbehaving news
and mail readers are likely to do to the indentation of your script before
embedding it in a message. The net being the somewhat less safe place than
it used to be, many people may be hesitant to open attachments either. It
might well be safer to simply toss it on a personal website and provide a
link.

Skip

 

[Peter Corbett]

Peter> About how short should a program be to be postable to this
Peter> newsgroup - in other words, at what length should you stick it on
Peter> a web page and post a link?

158 lines is probably not a killer. However, consider what misbehaving news
and mail readers are likely to do to the indentation of your script before
embedding it in a message. The net being the somewhat less safe place than
it used to be, many people may be hesitant to open attachments either. It
might well be safer to simply toss it on a personal website and provide a
link.

Good advice, but in this case indentation isn't as important as
usual. Still, I like to keep a little formatting for readability.

Thanks,

Peter

 

[Peter Hansen]

I've written a program to illustrate a few... syntactic issues with
Python. It's 158 <80 character lines long.

About how short should a program be to be postable to this newsgroup -
in other words, at what length should you stick it on a web page and
post a link?

Does it really have to be 158 lines to demonstrate these few issues? I
for one almost never take the time to dig through 158 lines of someone
else's code, partly on the assumption that almost any interesting issue
can be covered (using Python, specifically) in about a dozen lines of
code. YMMV

-Peter

 

[Fredrik Lundh]

Does it really have to be 158 lines to demonstrate these few issues? I
for one almost never take the time to dig through 158 lines of someone
else's code, partly on the assumption that almost any interesting issue
can be covered (using Python, specifically) in about a dozen lines of
code.

did you click on the link he posted a little later?

YMMV

no, YVFC.

</F>

 

[Richie Hindle]

[Peter]

Does it really have to be 158 lines to demonstrate these few issues?

I think you missed the other Peter's second post, where he points to his
program: http://www.pick.ucam.org/~ptc24/yvfc.html

I didn't read every one of his 158 lines, but his code is pure poetry, or
possibly triple-distilled evil, depending on your point of view. 158 lines
very well spent either way!

 

[Duncan Booth]

[Peter]

Does it really have to be 158 lines to demonstrate these few issues?

I think you missed the other Peter's second post, where he points to
his program: http://www.pick.ucam.org/~ptc24/yvfc.html

I didn't read every one of his 158 lines, but his code is pure poetry,
or possibly triple-distilled evil, depending on your point of view.
158 lines very well spent either way!

Yes, but by his own admission he could have posted it as 1 rather longer
line and it would have still worked (I verified this, it really does work
as a single line Python program).

I must admit to being impressed, and also seriously concerned about Peter
Corbett's sanity.

 

[Steve Holden]

[Peter]

Does it really have to be 158 lines to demonstrate these few issues?

I think you missed the other Peter's second post, where he points to his
program: http://www.pick.ucam.org/~ptc24/yvfc.html

I didn't read every one of his 158 lines, but his code is pure poetry, or
possibly triple-distilled evil, depending on your point of view. 158 lines
very well spent either way!

I particularly like the warranty:

> # NO WARRANTY: If you use this for anything important, you're mad!

regards
Steve

 

[Mike Meyer]

SIOD in Python. Sort of.

<mike

 

[Peter Hansen]

did you click on the link he posted a little later?

What link? I see only two posts from him in this thread, one at 5:09
and the other at 6:14, and neither contains links. I suppose I should
start to distrust my ISP's news feed, because that was how it was this
morning and how it still is now. There are a grand total of 10 posts to
that thread as I'm about to post this reply.

Sorry, but I can't click on links that don't exist.

no, YVFC.

?? you've lost me there too. Your Very Fucked Computer? I'll agree
that some computer around here is fucked if I can't see a post that
everyone else can see.

-Peter

(Well now... I just realized that it wasn't in the same thread after
all, and yes, I did see the post, then noticed a reply from someone
talking about Greenspun's law, quickly hit "k" to move on to more
interesting topics, and never gave it a second thought. Certainly
didn't notice it was also Peter who had posted that one, nor realized
the connection (probably because I'd already sent my reply and thus
flushed the whole affair from my memory). So, in summary, yes I did
click on the link he posted, but that was after I'd already replied so I
don't think it's particularly useful for us to be discussing it. YMMV
again. )

(And I do see the YVFC part now... what was really bizarre was trying to
do a search on the web for what that acronym means. Try it... strange
stuff. I was thinking there was some weird conspiracy to make people
think there was this acronym that was well known but had no online
definition.)

 

[Steve Holden]

What link? I see only two posts from him in this thread, one at 5:09
and the other at 6:14, and neither contains links. I suppose I should
start to distrust my ISP's news feed, because that was how it was this
morning and how it still is now. There are a grand total of 10 posts to
that thread as I'm about to post this reply.

Sorry, but I can't click on links that don't exist.




?? you've lost me there too. Your Very Fucked Computer? I'll agree
that some computer around here is fucked if I can't see a post that
everyone else can see.

-Peter

(Well now... I just realized that it wasn't in the same thread after
all, and yes, I did see the post, then noticed a reply from someone
talking about Greenspun's law, quickly hit "k" to move on to more
interesting topics, and never gave it a second thought. Certainly
didn't notice it was also Peter who had posted that one, nor realized
the connection (probably because I'd already sent my reply and thus
flushed the whole affair from my memory). So, in summary, yes I did
click on the link he posted, but that was after I'd already replied so I
don't think it's particularly useful for us to be discussing it. YMMV
again. )

(And I do see the YVFC part now... what was really bizarre was trying to
do a search on the web for what that acronym means. Try it... strange
stuff. I was thinking there was some weird conspiracy to make people
think there was this acronym that was well known but had no online
definition.)

Reminds me of the old one about them missing the world "gullible" from
[name dictionary of your choice]. Always nice to be able to ask someone
to read the definition once you've got them to prove you wrong.

Peter, perhaps you are getting too old to be posting on c.l.py ;-)

that'll-teach-you-to-be-rude-about-*me*-ly y'rs - steve