From: gabriele renzi <rff_rffREMOVE@...>
Date: 2007-07-15T18:05:11+09:00
Subject: Re: xkcd and ugly code

On Sun, 15 Jul 2007 17:08:43 +0900, Sharon Phillips wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I read this xkcd strip the other day (http://www.xkcd.com/c287.html)  
> and, of course, had to solve it. So I whipped up a quick bit of Ruby  
> code that gave me the answers. Took about 5 minutes and then I was  
> happy. Except I wasn't, because I looked at what I'd written. Ugly  
> and not dry at all, sopping wet even; basically six nested loops.  
> I'll try to reproduce it below.
> 
> Trouble is, I then spend the best part of an afternoon (don't tell my  
> boss ;-) trying to solve it elegantly, but couldn't. I did come up  
> with other ways that worked, but they were pretty cumbersome and slow.
> 
> There has to be a 'ruby way' to do this. Any suggestions?

not sure about the ruby way, but isn't it a case of the knapsack problem?
If so, the greedy and the dynamic programming algorithms for it are
quite elegant.



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