Perl Poetry Contest

Weeden writes "Leafing through the latest issue of The Perl Journal I came accross the Perl Poetry Contest. The deadline is the 20th of February and all the details can be found here. "

Comments

Programming Poetry

[panda]

Perl Poetry has been going on for quite some time. You'll notice that the article sites one of the earlier examples as having been posted in April of 1990.

I've been trying to write Perl Poems off and on since 1996. I'm trying to write code that functions not only as a poem, but as useful code. That's not as easy as it sounds. I'm definitely going to enter the competition this year. (If they're planning to do this next year, I'll definitely be entering then, too, but with some more sophisticated.)

As for writing poetry in other programming languages, I have written some Lisp code that I thought was a bit poetic (though by accident) and quite beautiful to look at. I've not tried this in C or C++, but that might be fun, too.

Contrary to some other opinions expressed here, I don't think writing poetry in a programming language is a waste of time, particularly if the object is to write a poem and not hold it up as an example of good coding practice! I view programming more as an art than a science anyway. Yeah, there's abstract Computer Science with all it's attendant math and theories, then there's the actual ART of programming which EXPRESSES those theories in a LANGUAGE.

Don't be swayed to the dark side...

[Raindeer]

On this website there are some great quotes regarding Perl. My favourites are (Disclaimer: these are not mine, but I claim fair use. :-)) :

prhine: Advanced Perl Programming is a welcome mat on the Dark Path(tm)

prhine: D'you know anything about JavaPerl? As in how they combine the two?
Colin: Well. Imagine that Java is a dainty, well-dressed Victorian lady. And Perl is a big, grimy 10th century viking with a hard-on. JavaPerl is like a small room with a bed.

Re:Beauty in the eye of the beholder ?

[MosesJones]

A truly obfuscated program cannot be translated into code that the average programmer can understand. Ever

Eh ? There was me thinking the Church-Turing Theorem held. Obfuscated code doesn't have to be complex functionaly (just look at some of the hello world contenders in the IOCC) they have to be complex to de-crypt into a quickly understandable form. The functionality has very little to do with the obfuscation.

A well written set of libraries for 3d graphics will in fact be very easy to understand from a code perspective, it is the functionality that is the tough bit to grasp. Obfuscated code is very different from complex functionality. Look at some of the code in the Linux kernel, wonderfully written, and if you understand the functionality you can modify it yourself, if you don't have a clue what it is trying to do its comparable to russian, this doesn't mean the code is obfuscated, but that the functionality is difficult.

Difficult code should be difficult to understand because of the functionality it implements not because someone couldn't be arsed to comment it, use sensible names and wanted 40,000 lines to run in one method with gotos.

Obfuscation is the other end of the scale, its code that is made difficult in and of itself, the difficulty of the functionality is only found after the code has been translated.

Go Harl Go!

[babbage]

Wow, one of Harl's poems got used as the example. I'm impressed -- he's a really cool guy, and smart as hell. Pasting from an email this morning (sorry Harl):

> hey, our very own Harl is famous:
>
> http://www.itknowledge.com/tpj/perl -poetry00.html

Wow.

I doubt I'll be performing in Silicon Valey somehow. The program does sync the disk on a unix system though. I guess system calls are cheating a *bit*. However, I've replaced the sync command on one of my unix machines with this poem as a wrapper, so it runs the poem whenever a sync request is made.

Harl

Beauty in the eye of the beholder ?

[MosesJones]

I'm not exactly sure what the difference between this and obfuscating the code is. Its not readable code its unreadable _as_ code but readable as English, a cute idea and a fine basis for a competition, but an awful way of coding. This is just, if not more, evil that obfuscation, unreadable code can be translated, readable code in this manner is misleading which can be worse.

Okay I know I'm just a kill-joy but the reason the obfuscation competitions are so good is that they make the point against obfuscation so well, this competition appears to be pushing this as a beautiful way to code. Code is beautiful in and of itself, it is its structure that lends beauty and its simplicity that defines genius. Code as poetry is ugly as code, even if it is beautiful as poetry.

Re:Beauty in the eye of the beholder ?

[slashdot-me]

One significant difference is that obfuscated programs can actually do nifty things. Poetry is generally to restrictive to write anything useful.

Also, I think you don't understand the nature of true obfuscation. A truly obfuscated program cannot be translated into code that the average programmer can understand. Ever. Good examples are compression programs, 3d graphics, and simulations. Go read the source to an mp3 codec and ask yourself, "Do I have any idea what the tonality function does?" Even after reading that function 10 times you probably won't.

Understanding a truly obfuscated program will probably require the purchasing of several textbooks.

Ryan

beowulf

[sparkes]

It's pointless trying to port the epic Beowulf over to perl cos anglo-saxon is so similer to perl. It only really differs in its use of the semicolon ;-)

sparkes
it was ment to be funny so don't hit my karma for not being a coward.

*** www.linuxuk.co.uk relaunches 1 Mar 2000 ***

We need a tougher competition

[luckykaa]

We need something that can be read as a poem,
And also looks nice.
And is also a functioning program in more than one language.
And can b typd on a kyboard with no e's

Postin Perl

[348]

#!/usr/bin/perl
#
# Postin.pl
# by 348

seek topost (thatflamebait);
Firstpost (the thread, fast);

while ($natalie) {
petrifies $to($stone);
not grits;
}

accept the, moderation;
seek the, $-1Troll, $-1offtopic'
and wait;
stat thekarma;

unlink and listen (for, $theflames);

for (a, karmawhore our /.) {
system ("is trollheaven");

Proof code is free speech

[griffjon]

We should bring both the Obfuscated Code and the Perl Poetry contests up in the DVD CCA cases as proof that coding is a form of expression of skill (obfuscated code) and of thoughts, much like language (perl poetry).