

Ask HN: Size of a program as a measure of simplicity? - zeynel1

In this article http://plus.maths.org/issue37/features/omega/index.html Gregory Chaitin says that "... simplicity — or lack of it — [of scientific law] is reflected in the length of the program."<p>Since "the size of a computer program is the number of "bits" it contains"; Chaitin measures simplicity with the number of bits in a program.<p>This doesn't sound right to me. All "hello world" programs achieve the same result; but all "hello world" programs do not have the same number of bits; as far as I know.<p>Anyone care to comment?
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pseudonym
I'll just leave this here.

<http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~nryan/demos/index.html>

Anyone who thinks program complexity is judged solely on program size has
never written a demo, or participated in a JAPH/Perl Golf competition.

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richmassena23
I would not say the length of the program, but the number of possible states
(which may not be a computable function, someone correct me, is this
Kolmogorov complexity?) which determines simplicity.

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zeynel1
<http://plus.maths.org/issue37/features/omega/index.html>

