arc

which Dan somehow figured out. So it takes the `ls` of that directory, giving a list in mostly random order, and loads them one by one, putting them into a hash table, whose iteration order is also random. In modern times, profs* is populated in a lazy fashion whenever users post after a server reboot. Arc uses "maptable" to iterate over a hash table, which under the hood used hash-table-for-each: https://github.com/shawwn/arc/blob/arc3.1/ac.scm#L1082 Nowadays in Racket, it probably uses hash-for-each: https://docs.racket-lang.org/reference/hashtables.html#%28de... It does have a "try-order?" option, which gives a deterministic ordering if set. But whenever I set it, I sometimes get strange errors, at least on MacOS. Since it's disabled by default, I doubt they set it. Even if they did, it would be ordered alphabetically, which means your topcolor wouldn't be anywhere close to the top unless someone else whose name starts with "a" also set it. I only know all this because I've spent five years updating Arc for the modern era over at https://github.com/shawwn/sparc Past discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38586832

e" to something concrete: What's the shortest program you can write with a state machine? My argument is that it's "significantly longer than the equivalent program without a state machine."