Source
- URL: https://x.com/DaleCloudman/status/2078134295768486176
- Author: Dale Cloudman (@DaleCloudman)
- Posted: 2026-07-17 15:06:40
Branch
1/ @DaleCloudman
@VictorTaelin
Ya compress the AST size not the character count..
Not just branches
Foo(a(1,2))
Bar(a(1,2))
Is worse than
Z = a(1,2)
Foo(z)
Bar(z)
2/ @VictorTaelin
@DaleCloudman
no. number of branches.
ast size is not the true measure of complexity because non branching ast nodes can be inferred in linear time
3/ @DaleCloudman
@VictorTaelin
Didn’t follow, what it means to ‘infer’ an AST node in this context?
4/ @VictorTaelin
I mean quadratic time *
I just obsreve that any program without branching can be reconstructed in quadratic time given enough I/O pairs. So I believe measuring complexity from number of branches is more accurate
You can’t build a complex algorithm without branches so, the more branches you have, the more complex your file / algorithm is. If you remove all branches, it becomes trivial and compressible, even if there are still lots of characters
Example:
foo = λa. a + a
and
foo = λa. a + a + a + a + a
have the same underlying complexity, despite one being larger.
or so I think (:
5/ @DaleCloudman
@VictorTaelin
So I’m trying this for Python and there’s lot of edge cases… how do I handle calling foreign code, it ‘optimized’ a max-finding algo by just calling np.max instead of doing the py version lol. and using np.where to avoid ifs…
6/ @DaleCloudman
@VictorTaelin
Ok I think it’s more that a function call is not a branch…