Back in university (1974), I took a course in AI. The prof wanted us to write a brute-force solution to solve the 8-queens problem -- any language!
I wrote the solution in APL in about an hour and it only had 3 lines of code. The rest of the class spent days on their terminals and keypunches trying to solve it. Most solutions took hundreds of lines of code.
I got a D from my professor. I questioned why and was told that it was unreadable, and that the solution was inefficient. This annoyed me because he didn't know APL, and I figured that since I solved the problem in one hour, while the rest took days, it was very efficient.
I protested the result with the department head (who liked APL) and ended up getting an A+. As you can imagine, all the rest of my assignments, written in a variety of languages, were graded by that AI prof with significant prejudice.
I passed nonetheless. I loved APL and ended up working for one of the major APL providers as my first job out of school.
I wrote the solution in APL in about an hour and it only had 3 lines of code. The rest of the class spent days on their terminals and keypunches trying to solve it. Most solutions took hundreds of lines of code.
I got a D from my professor. I questioned why and was told that it was unreadable, and that the solution was inefficient. This annoyed me because he didn't know APL, and I figured that since I solved the problem in one hour, while the rest took days, it was very efficient.
I protested the result with the department head (who liked APL) and ended up getting an A+. As you can imagine, all the rest of my assignments, written in a variety of languages, were graded by that AI prof with significant prejudice.
I passed nonetheless. I loved APL and ended up working for one of the major APL providers as my first job out of school.