TITLE: Confidence and Small, Clear Code
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: September 18, 2015  3:17 PM
DESC: 
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BODY:
Net Prophet, aka Scott Turner, is
<A HREF="http://netprophetblog.blogspot.com/2015/09/coding-update.html">
   porting the Pain Machine</A>,
his college hoops prediction system, from Common Lisp to
Python.  The new program is getting different values than
the old one in one portion of the code, though they don't
seem to affect model's overall performance.  Which program
is right?

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
 I suspect the Python version is probably "more correct"
 than the Common Lisp version, because this is a
 matrix-manipulation heavy part of the code, and it is
 expressed much more succinctly and clearly in Python.
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

Scott's
<A HREF="http://netprophetblog.blogspot.com/p/about-me.html">
   a darn good programmer</A>
and someone with a lot of Lisp experience, so don't go there.
This isn't a language testimonial.  It's a testament to how
programmers' confidence in their code goes up when they can
see more clearly that it says what they intended to say.  It
is easier to trust something we understand.  (But don't
forget to run some tests, too!)
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