[wnewman]

I do not deny the importance of the KISS moral of this story. However, there is also an important meta-moral from putting this story in a larger context: what lessons about feasible complexity you draw from your insect-themed programming contests may depend strongly on whether people like the dunkosmiloomump team happen to be participating.

(See https://alliance.seas.upenn.edu/~plclub/cgi-bin/contest/resu... .)

(The winning entry was elegant, complicated, and effective. I was Busman Holiday Club in that contest. I was reasonably pleased with my moderately complicated moderately effective entry, but even allowing for small team and shorter lightning-division timescale, the performance of my design falls rather short of theirs, and the junkyard rat design aesthetic of my entry falls rather short of the ballerina-by-day-ninja-by-night polish of that team's work.)