Just a general comment here (hope it's appropriate). I think it's terrific to make programs as concise as possible, but I don't think that "The most meaningful test of the length of a program is not lines or characters but the size of the codetree".
I think the length is better measured in time units, that is, by a) how long it takes to write it the first time and b) how long it takes to come back and make a meaningful modification to it.
I mean something like asp.net would generate a whole bunch of code to solve this problem, but it wouldn't really take that long to produce it.
Somewhere in the effort to produce the simplest language might there be a place for code generation tools, IDEs and, well, any other tool that speeds up the problem at hand? Funny that computer programmers are often the last people to ever want to actually use a computer program (think vi and notepad enthusiasts).
Will the beauty of Arc be confined to software written as ascii characters?
Anyway, that's just a comment; I really do love this stuff and think the work on Arc is wonderful.
Chris Tantillo
PS Hey - that's funny. I had to create an account after I posted this and I thought it would loose my text. But it remembered it - isn't that what the challenge is trying to do? You know, enter text (page 1), click a link (page 2), see text again (page 3). Pretty slick there :)
Regarding your PS: Yes, I agree. That's working extremely well. Isn't this forum designed in arc?
Edit: I tried to write something in my native language (German). But it doesn't work. This really seems to be a major drawback of arc. So far, you can only use it for English boards.
