From: David Alan Black <dblack@...>
Date: 2001-08-05T07:48:59+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:19151] Re: ANN: Code Amelioration Contest (presentedby Ruby Conference 2001)

Hello --

On Sun, 5 Aug 2001, Hal E. Fulton wrote:

> A couple of questions.
>
> 1. Does this contributed code have to be
> intentionally obfuscated? Or just suboptimal?

It's up to you.  I expect some people will have existing code they
might want to submit, while some might enjoy the process of coming
up with, essentially, code parodies.

The main thing is, it has to be something which people will find it
interesting to "ameliorate".  As for exactly how to follow that
advice, I'm not sure :-)

> I have plenty of the latter... code that was
> thrown together in a hurry and poorly designed.
>
> I guess the idea of ameliorating really garbled
> code makes for a good contest... but I think I
> would like it even better if the code were more
> real-world. By analogy, a makeover on a person
> would be more interesting if the person didn't start
> out in a clown suit.

I think there's room for a bit of both.  There's no standing tradition
of this contest, so to some extent it will define itself bottom-up.

> 2. Also, are there length limits or guidelines? I was
> thinking of submitting a little bug-tracking system
> that's about 600 lines long. This is something I
> actually wrote for a little team of six developers,
> but we ended up not needing it. It works, but it is
> ugly and was never refactored.


Again, it's partly a matter of whether anyone will actually choose to
ameliorate it.  It can't hurt to include it, since the worst that will
happen is that people will find it too long to want to rewrite.


David

-- 
David Alan Black
home: dblack@candle.superlink.net
work: blackdav@shu.edu
Web:  http://pirate.shu.edu/~blackdav