I cannot decide what I feel about the differences between my JavaScript and Haskell solution of the Vigenère cipher.

In natural languages, we speak about information density, and as far as I know, information density evens out if we provide time as a parameter. That is, a dense language is spoken and understood more slowly than a 'chatty' counterpart.

How should we think about terse programming languages? What do dense expressions lead to? Something elegant usually takes more time to articulate, but usually also more time to understand. Given a context that does not favor quick-fix solutions, this is most likely something good (especially in the long run) but what about environments that want results fast?

JavaScript

function vigenere(key) {
  const AZ_LENGTH = 26;
  const alphabetAZ = Array
    .from(
      {length: AZ_LENGTH},
      (_, i) => String.fromCharCode(i + 65)
    );
  const table = alphabetAZ.reduce((table, v, i) => ({...table, [v]: i}), {});
  const cryptoStr = (msg, key) => ''.padStart(msg.length, key);
  const cryptoStrLetterAt = (msg, key, pos) => cryptoStr(msg,key)[pos];
  return {
    encrypt: (msg) => msg
      .split('')
      .map(
        (char, i) => alphabetAZ[
          (table[char] + table[cryptoStrLetterAt(msg, key, i)]) % AZ_LENGTH]
      )
      .join(''),
    decrypt: (msg) => msg
      .split('')
      .map(
        (char, i) => alphabetAZ[
          (table[char] - table[cryptoStrLetterAt(msg, key, i)] + AZ_LENGTH) % AZ_LENGTH]
        )
      .join('')
  }
}

// --------------------------------
const code = vigenere('LEMON');
console.log(code.encrypt('ATTACKATDAWN')); // LXFOPVEFRNHR
console.log(code.decrypt('LXFOPVEFRNHR')); // ATTACKATDAWN

Haskell

import Data.Char

shift (senLetter, keyLetter) fn = chr $ start + (ord senLetter `fn` ord keyLetter) `mod` azLength
  where
start = ord 'A'
azLength = 26

encode sentence key = map (`shift` (+)) $ zip sentence $ cycle key
decode sentence key = map (`shift` (-)) $ zip sentence $ cycle key

-- --------------------------------
encode "ATTACKATDAWN" "LEMON" -- LXFOPVEFRNHR
decode "LXFOPVEFRNHR" "LEMON" -- ATTACKATDAWN

Is dense good?

The Vigenère cipher in JavaScript & Haskell

2020-09-12

JavaScript

Haskell