[ahartmetz]

As a bad physicist ("physics is the art of approximation", some prof said during my studies): Indeed, you only have to model the relevant aspect(s) of the system, which may be completely unrecognizable as the system.

I guess it's somewhat more true in programming, because if you have only ten lines, can you even call it modeling?

That said, I like to say that the best kind of code teaches you something new abou the problem it's solving. Some invariant, widely usable simplification, etc. Still not the same as modeling the system as such, though.

[carlmr]

>because if you have only ten lines, can you even call it modeling?

Ten? Do you even Perl?