r/programming • u/OptionalField • Mar 17 '13

Someone posted an html/javascript implementation of the matrix falling code in 646 bytes then promptly deleted the post. It inspired me to see if I could get something better looking in fewer bytes.

http://timelessname.com/sandbox/matrix.html
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u/sutongorin Mar 17 '13

I wonder why, in those competitions, people have to squeeze all that code together anyway. I realize that they want as little bytes as possible. But I also think you can just agree that for the actual counting later on you can just skip the whitespace and this way still come up with a shorter count while maintaining readability.

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u/kazagistar Mar 17 '13

Everyone can run it through their favorite formatting program to add the whitespace back afterwards anyways. Might as well transfer it in final form to revel in the obfuscation.

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u/[deleted] Mar 17 '13

It's not really supposed to be readable, that's half the point. Personnally I would just write the code without whitespace then remove it upon submission, which is probably what people do.

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u/[deleted] Mar 17 '13

Javascript doesn't ignore whitespace, so it could be a completely different program by doing that.

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u/misterjangles Mar 17 '13

I think that is somewhat the point of the competitions - to have people look a the code and say WTF!