[m-dev.] ICFP Contest: Any signs of life?

[Ralph Becket]

Peter Moulder, Sunday, 29 June 2003:
> One possibility is for the computer to take an existing sequence of
> instructions, and apply some random perturbations to the lengths of each
> of the segments of same command.  I.e. do the equivalent of `uniq -c'
> over the input, then modify the counts randomly, rejecting those that
> result in crashes, and accepting those that result in shorter times.

I don't think we have the time or the resources to do simulated
annealing on the traces!

> Also, I've just run
> 
>   tr . \\n < Een.trc|uniq -c|less
> 
> and I notice that in many places it spreads its `r' commands out over a
> turn rather than bunching them together; I don't know whether or not this
> is a common characteristic of optimal traces or whether it's just an
> artifact of how that trace was generated.

I started an argument in favour of this spreading out, but I've just
convinced myself that it's probably unnecessary and perhaps suboptimal.

> Another thing I was considering is to modify a graphics program to handle
> these funny curves, so that a human can do those perturbations, and apply
> human intelligence to the problem.

Best of luck!
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