From: Sam Gentle <sgentle@...>
Date: 2006-01-13T06:06:28+09:00
Subject: Re: Important Algorithm Finally Ported.

On 1/13/06, Phrogz <gavin@refinery.com> wrote:
> I think you missed a bit:
>
> def slim_shady_finder( homies )
>      homies.find{ |some_guy| some_guy.name.eql?( "Slim Shady" ) and not
> some_guy.imitating? }
> end

But surely you can't just know if a slim shady is just imitating
without first asking them to stand up.

Perhaps:

slim_shadies.find { |slim_shady| slim_shady.stand_up_unless {
slim_shady.imitating? } }

Of course, that has problems - for one, it messes up the shadies'
persistent 'standing' state. This could cause serious problems with
false negatives if they were asked to "please stand up" twice in a
row. It might be possible to subsequently make them sit again, but the
whole thing loses thread safety easily (what if two programs
simultaneously need to find the real slim shady?).

To top it all off, there are potential accessibility issues for
disabled slim shadies who are unable to stand. I consider this
particularly likely to become a problem if every person is a slim
shady lurking. I think the only real solution here is to accept that
there is a slim shady in all of us and make slim_shady_finder simply
return nil.

Sam