[Icfp04-discuss] three liberal arts

[Andrey V. Stolyarov]

On Tue, 8 Jun 2004, Andreas Bogk wrote:

> "Andrey V. Stolyarov" <f27 at backpath.croco.net> writes:
>
> > Well, I definitely agree that writing simulators is just a
> > wastage of time. The task is straightforward, there's nothing to
> > learn from it. Just several hours of coding.
>
> Oh, being able to come up with a simulator of decent performance is an
> advantage.  So I don't think it's bad you had to write it yourself.

Hmm, I think it's a good idea to translate all keywords into
numbers -- and that's almost all. State is represented with an
array of 6 short integers - the longest line, smth like

       Sense Here 127 247 Marker 6

becomes something like {20001 20101 127 247 20200 6}, then we
organize a straight 2d matrix to represent the whole program --
and that's almost all. The structures for representing the map
and the ants are obvious, just use matrices not lists (so that no
search is ever evolved, only indexing). I see no possibility of
any furhter optimization.

Well, there's still a problem of visualization, but, hmm, there
are lots of simple graphics libraries around. No brains needed
to use them, only some patience to write the code. BTW,
personally I had not enough patience so I never wrote any
visualization. In fact, my entry should have been submitted to
the lightning division only, but I later noticed some syntax
errors in the lightning submission ant that's why I decided to
continue.

Interesting task, really. But the simulator isn't.

>
> Andreas
>



--
Croco