Just out of curiosity, I followed the link to "Advent of Code" (never heard of it before). Got the first star, now working on the second.
I hate you. :) Ok, not really. But I can see I'll be playing Slay the Spire a lot less, in the coming evenings. Doing it in ooRexx, by the way. I need the practice in the features it has that TSO-REXX doesn't. --- Bob Bridges, [email protected], cell 336 382-7313 /* "Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time." (1 Peter 5:6) It is our job to humble ourselves; it is God's job to exalt. If we try to do His job, He will do our job. -Rick Joyner, "The World Aflame" * -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Schmitt, Michael Sent: Monday, July 1, 2024 16:35 I've been doing the annual Advent of Code (https://adventofcode.com/) since 2019. I did the first two years in Regina REXX, then switched to Python. I used Python 2 in 2021 with no IDE, Python 3 with VS Code in 2022 & 2023. I had 30 years of experience in REXX at that point, but still was more productive in Python -- with ZERO years of experience. My first Python program was the day 5 AoC program in 2021. The main reason is that REXX only has 2 data structures: lists of words, and stems. So you're in "if the only tool you have is a hammer, all problems look like nails" territory. It is like coding using a Turing machine: while it is technically *possible* to create any algorithm, it is a lot more work than if you had a language with data structures that directly model your business data structures. z/OS REXX makes this even harder, because you can't iterate over a stem. So now you have to either use just lists of words, or create *two* structures: a stem to hold the data, and another stem or list to index it sequentially. Nor is there a built-in way to sort stems. Or search them for a value. Or join them. And so on. And I know from the AoC puzzles that very long lists of words will really bog down the performance. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
