Announcement: Obfuscated Python competition

Geoff Howland ghowland at lupineNO.SPAMgames.com
Tue May 20 12:41:00 EDT 2003


>I reckon its possible to write bad code in any language.  So if it hasn't
>been done already, how about an obfuscated Python competition.
>
>Prize : One of my Perl books - lets see: "Perl in a Nuthouse" looks good.

I'd much rather see an Overly-Sophisticated Python Competition.  The
difference being instead of just trying to make it unreadable, it
stays readable but uses clever-interesting things Python is capable of
doing.

The code would be over-sophisticated for the need (always using
map/reduce/filter/list-comprehension/etc, even when its really not
appropriate), but still being readable.

I think itd be great to see a bunch of real live examples of some
clever/complex things that can be done with python with these powerful
functions that most people may not normally think of, but still allow
them to be readable.

Python is supposed to be all about readability and cleanliness, and
doing things the right way, so this competition would still fly in the
face of one of those concepts, but why not make it the one where
people can still learn from it without having to be a puzzle
detective?

No multi-line nesting, and lambdas for no reason, everything should be
clever and commented describing how this sophisticated concept works.

Thats my suggestion at least, as someone with some working knowledge
of Python, who would like to see other peoples better knowledge doing
cool things.  :)


-Geoff Howland
http://ludumdare.com/




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