(no subject)
This post unintentionally demonstrates that functional-style Python is ugly and bad.
Let us start at the top. At the beginning, it has some sample code which defines a multiple() function, which could be trivially inlined, resulting in code which looks like this (I'm doing all examples in Python 3):
print(sum(x for x in range(1, 1000+1) if x % 3 == 0 or x % 5 == 0))
There's no reason whatsoever to expand that out. This should be an early indication that maybe the code samples here aren't the greatest.
Moving on, there's getting the sum of all fibonacci numbers less than 4 million. This is done in the example using itertools and yield, resulting in a fair amount of ugly code. Here's how a sane person does it:
def fibsum():
a, b, c = 0, 1, 1
total = 0
while c < 4000000:
total += c
a, b, c = b, c, b + c
return total
Now that's much more readable, flexible, and maintainable.
Finally, there's the problem of finding the largest palindrome which is the product of two three digit numbers. Here's my solution, which contains less code, is much more readable, and oh yeah, I threw in an optimization to make it return almost instantly instead of having to crunch for a second:
def bigpalindrome():
best = 0
for i in range(999, 0, -1):
if i * 999 < best:
return best
for j in range(999, i-1, -1):
x = list(str(i*j))
x.reverse()
if int(''.join(x)) == i*j:
best = i*j
Much better. I think these examples do a good job of exploding the idea that the functional style of programming is clearly better and the appropriate first thing to teach people. Obviously some people are being driven to write horribly contorted and ugly code because they started in a functional language when they switch a more, ahem, mainstream one.
Let us start at the top. At the beginning, it has some sample code which defines a multiple() function, which could be trivially inlined, resulting in code which looks like this (I'm doing all examples in Python 3):
print(sum(x for x in range(1, 1000+1) if x % 3 == 0 or x % 5 == 0))
There's no reason whatsoever to expand that out. This should be an early indication that maybe the code samples here aren't the greatest.
Moving on, there's getting the sum of all fibonacci numbers less than 4 million. This is done in the example using itertools and yield, resulting in a fair amount of ugly code. Here's how a sane person does it:
def fibsum():
a, b, c = 0, 1, 1
total = 0
while c < 4000000:
total += c
a, b, c = b, c, b + c
return total
Now that's much more readable, flexible, and maintainable.
Finally, there's the problem of finding the largest palindrome which is the product of two three digit numbers. Here's my solution, which contains less code, is much more readable, and oh yeah, I threw in an optimization to make it return almost instantly instead of having to crunch for a second:
def bigpalindrome():
best = 0
for i in range(999, 0, -1):
if i * 999 < best:
return best
for j in range(999, i-1, -1):
x = list(str(i*j))
x.reverse()
if int(''.join(x)) == i*j:
best = i*j
Much better. I think these examples do a good job of exploding the idea that the functional style of programming is clearly better and the appropriate first thing to teach people. Obviously some people are being driven to write horribly contorted and ugly code because they started in a functional language when they switch a more, ahem, mainstream one.