Programming Challenge: Phraser

re: Programming Challenge: Phraser

Joe Lisp User — Tue, 30 Mar 2004 06:33:00 GMT

This is pretty similar to the programming problem that was used to compare Java to C/C++ (and later to Lisp) a few years ago:

http://www.norvig.com/java-lisp.html

re: Programming Challenge: Phraser

Anonymous — Tue, 30 Mar 2004 06:58:00 GMT

I didn't see you mentioning payment or a prize? Do you expect someone doing your job for free? :-)

re: Programming Challenge: Phraser

the1 — Tue, 30 Mar 2004 08:17:00 GMT

Dear Joe,

Thanks for the pointer! I wasn't aware that there was a similar contest. But we shouldn't let that take away the fun, should we? Let's try to beat Norvig!

Dear Anonymous,

By winning the contest, you gain unlimited bragging right. Didn't I also mention your boss's reaction? Come on, there is no excuse for not doing it. :-)

re: Programming Challenge: Phraser

senkwe — Tue, 30 Mar 2004 15:31:00 GMT

Hey, isn't including numbers in the phrase a cop out? eg "nice-9-in-fox". Shoudn't there be a few constraints on how many numbers are allowed in the phrase?

Another clear code challenge

jaybaz_MS's WebLog — Tue, 30 Mar 2004 20:08:00 GMT

re: Programming Challenge: Phraser

the1 — Tue, 30 Mar 2004 20:10:00 GMT

Dear Senkwe,

Let's keep it simple. For now I don't care how many numbers you use in the phrase. The idea is to get ALL different ways to phrase your phone number. Additional constraints (e.g. 3 digits allowed at most) can aways be added later to filter the result. The principle of modular programming says we should do only ONE thing (and do it well) in one module.

re: Programming Challenge: Phraser

B.Y. — Tue, 30 Mar 2004 21:09:00 GMT

OK, I have a question. When you say "how clear the code is", does the word code mean code only, or code and comment ? If I have the following two entries:

*entry A: simple code without comment.
*entry B: slightly more complex code than A, but it has a ton of comments to make it easier to understand.

which entry is considered better in this contest ?

re: Programming Challenge: Phraser

the1 — Tue, 30 Mar 2004 22:38:00 GMT

Dear B.Y.,

You are really serious about this. :-) This is a contest for clear code. While good comments are important, they are not the focus. (Actually often I don't trust comments, because I've seen so many cases when they are out of sync with what the code really does -- programmers always update the code and forget to change the comments accordingly).

Good code should be clear on itself and require few comments. Bad comments are worse than no comments at all. I hate people writing comments just for comments' sake, e.g.

a++; // increase the value of a by 1

In your example, A will be preferred -- as long as it can be easily understood without comment.

Finally, I don't want to pretend being an authority on code clarity. There is no judge for this contest. :-) The whole purpose of this chanllenge is to have some fun and learn from each others' different angles of solving problems. (OK, I lied about the big raise, but if we learn something from this, it can be applied to get us closer to the raise.)

re: Programming Challenge: Phraser

Jay Bazuzi [MS] — Tue, 30 Mar 2004 23:57:00 GMT

Here are some thoughts on comments: http://weblogs.asp.net/jaybaz_ms/archive/2004/03/22/94066.aspx

If your code can't be understood without comments, then either add them or simplify. (Doing neither is bad!)

re: Programming Challenge: Phraser

CalvinH [MS] — Wed, 31 Mar 2004 20:28:00 GMT

My boss forwarded me this blog<g>

I have a 100 line solution (with comments) not written in C++. It uses a 53000 word dictionary and does not have much optimization, although I have an optimized version too.

How should I submit this entry? Should I just post it here?

thanks

re: Programming Challenge: Phraser

the1 — Wed, 31 Mar 2004 20:37:00 GMT

Dear Calvin,

Wow, the first entry! Congratulations!

You can either post the code here, or put it on your own blog (if you have one or want to create one) and provide a link.

If you post it here, the format and indentation will be lost. :-( Let's see how it looks, and if necessary, you can email me (Zhanyong Wan) the code and I'll post it in its original format.

Also, can you provide a link to your dictionary so others can also use it? Thanks!

Word games with phone numbers: 1-800-RESULTS

VS DATA Team's WebLog — Thu, 01 Apr 2004 03:19:00 GMT

re: Programming Challenge: Phraser

CalvinH [MS] — Thu, 01 Apr 2004 03:23:00 GMT

Here's a link to the programming challenge solution on my blog. It also includes a link to the dictionary I used.

http://blogs.msdn.com/vsdata/archive/2004/03/31/105159.aspx

Word games with phone numbers: 1-800-RESULTS (by Calvin)

VS DATA Team's WebLog — Thu, 01 Apr 2004 05:29:00 GMT

First entry to my programming challenge

the1's WebLog — Thu, 01 Apr 2004 23:43:00 GMT

re: Programming Challenge: Phraser

Justin Rogers — Fri, 02 Apr 2004 00:45:00 GMT

I made some changes to the algorithm by cutting out single character responses. I don't bother placing the dashes in since I don't think they are uber important, but I could put that feature back in if necessary. The code is hosted on.

http://weblogs.asp.net/justin_rogers/articles/105916.aspx

I'm using the cheapo dictionary for now, and I've done 0 optimizations. The only true optimization is in the switch table.

One thing to note. You can really optimize the algorithm in the case that a 1 or 2 somehow bisects the numbers. When you do this, you only have to process two substrings, reinserting the splitting character where necessary. This can result in a huge performance gain. However, a good deal of the numbers you would process don't contain a 1 or a 0, and so the perf gain is lost.

re: Programming Challenge: Phraser

Justin Rogers — Fri, 02 Apr 2004 00:55:00 GMT

And my algorithm isn't properly convergent either, so I'm not yet completed.

Entries to my programming challenge

the1's WebLog — Fri, 02 Apr 2004 02:28:00 GMT

Another entry to the phraser programming contest

the1's WebLog — Fri, 02 Apr 2004 12:11:00 GMT

My own solution to my programming challenge

the1's WebLog — Fri, 02 Apr 2004 23:00:00 GMT

Phone Number Conversion Challenge

Ken Robertson's Blog — Fri, 02 Apr 2004 23:46:00 GMT

Phone Number Conversion Challenge

Ken Robertson's Blog — Fri, 02 Apr 2004 23:47:00 GMT

Solutions to the Phraser programming challenge

the1's WebLog — Wed, 07 Apr 2004 02:50:00 GMT

Solutions to the Phraser programming challenge

the1's WebLog — Wed, 07 Apr 2004 02:50:00 GMT

One more entry to the Phaser challenge

the1's WebLog — Wed, 07 Apr 2004 02:55:00 GMT

A JScript entry to the Phaser chanllenge

the1's WebLog — Wed, 07 Apr 2004 03:48:00 GMT

My entry to the Phraser compo

Frans Bouma's blog — Wed, 07 Apr 2004 12:31:00 GMT

re: Programming Challenge: Phraser

Nick Berardi — Wed, 07 Apr 2004 14:56:00 GMT

"Nice" isn't in the dictionary list that you provided.

re: Programming Challenge: Phraser

Nick Berardi — Wed, 07 Apr 2004 15:05:00 GMT

neither is "in", "win", or "fox". just to let everybody know for testing purposes.

Programming Challenge: Phraser

Nick Berardi's Blog — Wed, 07 Apr 2004 20:27:00 GMT

Programming Challenge: Phraser

Nick Berardi's Blog — Wed, 07 Apr 2004 20:40:00 GMT

re: Programming Challenge: Phraser

Nick Berardi — Wed, 07 Apr 2004 17:48:00 GMT

Here is my submission for the contest. You can find the code at http://blog.zigamorph.com/Default.aspx/archive/2004/04/07/158.aspx

In addition you just need to take the word is in this blog and add "nice", "in", "win", and "fox". Then name it "Dictionary.txt" and put it in the same directory as your program.

Have fun and if you find any bugs please submit it to my blog for the code.

For all of you that want to know how long this too, it took about 3 hours to wrap my mind around the problem and code it. So please forgive spelling errors.

Thanks, Nick

re: Programming Challenge: Phraser

Nick Berardi — Wed, 07 Apr 2004 18:03:00 GMT

Oh one more thing. In you original post you mentioned that there was 160 solutions for the number 6423946369 but my program returns 228 possible solutions. I have verified all the data am I missing something in my program? Anybody see an error, or was there an error with the original dataset?

re: Programming Challenge: Phraser

the1 — Wed, 07 Apr 2004 20:06:00 GMT

Nick,

Your result list is bigger because your word list contains "ox", which mine doesn't have.

re: Programming Challenge: Phraser

Mike — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 06:03:00 GMT

Here is my entry to the challenge:

http://zert.net/blog/2004/04/07/programming_challenge_phraser.html

re: Programming Challenge: Phraser

Nick Berardi — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 16:29:00 GMT

Ah..

That makes more sense, I had to add that to get one of the 4 results you had listed above.

re: Programming Challenge: Phraser

Nick Berardi — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 16:40:00 GMT

Hey Mike,

Nice easy solution to look at. But what dictionary did you use. Because the one I got off the site above doesn't seem to work. Well at least there seems to be a loop that never ends?

re: Programming Challenge: Phraser

Brian C Robinson — Fri, 09 Apr 2004 17:24:00 GMT

Ok, here's my beautifully innefficient but correct and clear solution:

http://www.herassmygod.org/bcr19374/programming/Phraser/Phraser.py

Tests available here:

http://www.herassmygod.org/bcr19374/programming/Phraser/PhraserTest.py

And an example of using the class (assuming words.txt in the current directory is a text file with one word per line, as the example stated in the problem):

http://www.herassmygod.org/bcr19374/programming/Phraser/PhraserRun.py

Programming in XSLT!

the1's WebLog — Sat, 21 Aug 2004 00:31:00 GMT

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