From: Gavin Kistner <gavin@...>
Date: 2005-09-02T23:23:23+09:00
Subject: Re: [SUMMARY] Word Chains (#44)

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On Sep 1, 2005, at 6:55 AM, Ruby Quiz wrote:
> Gavin Kistner asked that I try timing the quiz solutions this  
> week.  I did
> indeed "try" that very thing and the results shocked me.  Let's  
> take a look,
> shall we:
[...]
>     === Timing ./Gavin Kistner/word_chain.rb ===
>     ./Gavin Kistner/word_chain.rb:65:in `Integer': invalid value  
> for Integer:
>     "duck" (ArgumentError)
>             from ./Gavin Kistner/word_chain.rb:65
>     === ./Gavin Kistner/word_chain.rb:  0.020758 seconds ===
[...]
> My thanks to all who were able to understand my command-line argument
> instructions this week.  ;)  Seriously, thanks to all submitters.   
> Many great
> solutions this week.

D'oh! Consider me well-and-duly admonished. I understood the  
instructions you laid out in the quiz, and then ran out of time to  
implement the proper interface. (I was thinking I needed to write a  
whole nice usage bit, which would have taken more time than I was  
willing to spend on that polish. I wish I had thought of just  
throwing out "-d" like some others did.)

I selfishly assumed that you could account for the idiosyncratic  
interface I provided; by extension I was placing the burden on you of  
hand tailoring any such tests to whatever non-standard interface  
anyone else may have chosen, also. This might have been doable (if  
still selfish) had only 2 or 3 people responded to the quiz. I  
certainly would agree, however, that when the quiz solutions poured  
in as they did (like so much informational flooding) it is wholly  
unreasonable.

If you were a teacher paid to instruct, I might expect (or at least  
desire) a deeper level of investigation. ("You got the final answer  
wrong, and will lose points for it, but let's look in-depth at your  
work to see what mistake you may have made.") But Ruby Quiz is  
entirely voluntary, and I believe that I should take the time to make  
your job of running it as easy as possible. Especially if I make  
additional requests of the analysis.

Zero sarcasm in the above. My sincere apologies for turning in code  
that clearly didn't adhere to the interface requirements.

I think even the analysis of the failing solutions is a good lesson -  
in the business world and many other areas of life, first impressions  
and exterior polish can be more important than what's under the hood.

Thanks as always for running the quiz!

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