The great commenting debate generated a lot of disagreement, both here and elsewhere, about the value of code comments with respect to writing self-explanatory code. If you are of the opinion that good code does not need comments, here is your chance to prove it. Laurie Cheers has created The Self-Documenting Code Contest. The idea is to solve a given problem using the most understandabe code that you can write. No comments are allowed. The problem is to generate all two-word anagrams of the word “documenting”.
Although I’ve clearly stated my opinion in favour of comments, I decided to give it a shot. I’ve already submitted my Haskell solution and, to be honest, you’d do well to improve on its readability. I believe that it satisfies all of the requirements using a brilliantly simple algorithm.
I’ve hidden my code in case you want to try for yourself first. Click “show” to reveal my solution: show
UPDATE: I got disqualified from the contest for “being a smartass” 🙁