Thursday 12 January 2006

Sudoku

A while ago I was introduced to Sudoku puzzles - a kind of number crossword in a nine-by-nine grid. As is my habit, I started designing a program to work with them (even though plenty are available for sale or for free). After days of designing elegant software structures to enable the several features I wanted to include, I bit the bullet and hacked up a quick and dirty text-mode program that does nothing but solve the puzzle. It took about half an hour to write, and it works just by placing numbers and seeing if they fit, backtracking as necessary when a problem is encountered.

I'm not entirely sure what my point is, but I think it has something to do with wasted design effort.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'm back in sleep-deprived mode.
PPS - It didn't take long, did it?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Roughly how much sleep do you need a night? This is my first week back at the orifice after three weeks, and I only managed to last until Wedensday before getting up was a HUGE chore.

I was even in bed last night at 9:30. I feel like such an old man!

John said...

Well, it was today that I hit my alarm and set my head back down on the pillow for just five more minutes. That's how I know I've used a bit more energy than I absorbed. There are a few reasonable explanations I can give for this that don't mean I'm just a big sleep hog, so I'm probably okay.

Normally I go with about seven hours of sleep per night, though during the Christmas break this got up as high as eleven.

Mokalus of Borg