Saturday, October 03, 2009 3:47 PM,

A message from Prof. Patt while he attends a meeting in New Jersey:

A student writes:



     Hey Professor Patt,

     In class you mentioned something about the number of lines our program
     can contain, i didn't catch on what you said. i tried to look at the
     program instructions and it did not mention anything either. so is
     there a limit on the number of lines it can have?

     Thank you! Have a great day!
     <<name withheld by Prof. Patt>>



What I said in class was that you should be able to write the program in ten 
lines.  Now I wish I had not said that, since to get the program down to that 
small a number requires some strong cleverness.  After class, I wrote a 
straightforward program that required 13 lines, including constants.  There is 
no limit to how many lines you take.  My point in mentioning anything was to 
alert you that if your program take 30 or 40 lines, you are doing something 
fundamentally misguided and should see a TA.  If your program contains fewer 
than 20 lines, I think you can feel pretty comfortable about it.

Yale Patt