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Singapore's Prime Minister Shares His C++ Sudoku Solver Code
itwbennett writes: Several weeks ago, during a speech at the Founders Forum Smart Nation Singapore Reception, Singapore's prime minister Lee Hsien Loong said that he used to enjoy programming, and that the last program he wrote was a Sudoku solver in C++. To back that up, earlier today he announced (on Facebook and Twitter) that his code is available to download. He wrote on Facebook that he wrote the program 'several years ago' and that the code does 'a backtrack search, choosing the next cell to guess which minimises the fanout.'
Well... probably more accurate to call that C code. It's compilable under a C++ complier, but offhand I didn't spot anything that really made it C++-specific. Not a knock on the Prime Minister, but it might even be a little more geek cred to call it a Sudoku solver in C.
It might be a 'stupid sudoku solver', like you say, but at least, that is a program that does something, rather than the congress critters who do nothing but producing massive amount of HOT AIR
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Not among prime ministers
Would have to be Heads of Government. Lee's a Prime Minister, so he's not Head of State. Singapore's Head of State is Tony Tan.
Under Singapore's Constitution President Tan has very few powers, but he still technically outranks the PM who has powers. It's similar to the system in Britain/Canada/etc. where the Queen's Head of State,* but the Prime Minister is the one who actually does everything interesting.
And yes, this is a pet peeve of mine. I spent the week Netanyahu addressed Congress in constant nerd-rage because the entire US media kept calling him a "Head of State" when he isn't.
*Altho many Canadians argue the Queen isn't their Head of State, her representative in Canada is (the Governor-General). The fact no Court's ruled on this definitively shows how important the title "Head of State" is in a Parliamentary system. Most legal scholars seem to think that the Queen is Head of State, but there is a minority that disagrees and their Constitution is not helpful on this question. But mostly nobody cares.
The code resembles something you expect from a first-year programming student - there's an input buffer overflow bug waiting to happen, the array size is odd (80 byte array? why? scanf() is still called without a field length specifier, and you only use 9 of those 80 bytes in a normal case).
You seem to be very optimistic in your views of first year programming students.
Here's what I see: Many years ago, I had a lovely job helping to teach people to program, and I had to review their homework. There were some whose thought processes were all over the place. There was one guy who managed to write the most convoluted code that always worked perfectly well, but I would never have hired him because reviewing it was just too painful. And there was one student who wrote code that I could scan in half a minute and see that it was correct and worked. And that's what this guy's code looks like.
"Perhaps it was written by him in his spare time". OF COURSE it was written in his spare time. His a prime minister, he doesn't write code on the job. What comments do you want? The code is simple and obvious. What data structures to explain? If you are too stupid to understand them immediately, then you shouldn't be programming. What lack of error checking? What scenario do you suggest where error checking would help?
Your last sentence is a totally unfounded, vicious attack on the intellectual honesty of the man. It's disgusting. Unless you have any evidence for it, you should apologise.
There's no shortage of people ragging on the code. "It's not C++ enough to be called C++," "there's not enough comments", "it uses C stdio.h", etc. Get over it.
This looks like the sort of program I might dash out over an afternoon (maybe two) to satisfy some intellectual curiosity. Programming as play. This isn't production code, it's fun code, written to satisfy oneself.
Is it perfect? WHO CARES! That's not important. That misses the point. If you doodle in your notepad and it brings you a smile, does anyone care it's not as good as the Mona Lisa? You sure as heck don't. And that's what this code is. A doodle. It just happens to be in simple, straightforward procedural C/C++ code.
I personally think playing with programming is important. Sure, you'll write a lot of dreck. But, you'll also learn a lot. You learn real lessons when you do write dodgy code, and the dodgy code actually bites you. You also can try new things fearlessly. After all, you're programming a toy for oneself, and you're under no deadline pressure. There's no spec you have to fulfill. You can experiment and enjoy it.
Programming as play still helps build your programming reflexes. If and when you do sit down to write professional grade software, all of that play will make the basic work of programming natural. Rather than focusing your energy on the basic details of programming, you can instead focus your energy designing maintainable code that meets the business requirements and documenting that design. Writing the code just flows naturally.
So, yeah, I'm impressed. This Sudoku solver brought a smile to my face. It's incredibly cool that the prime minister shared a code doodle with us.
Program Intellivision!