Level 9 - Zero Preservation Initiative

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Has anyone beaten the speed challenge which is 25 steps or less? I'm not looking for a solution or hints, but so far I've only been able to do it in 28 steps. I've been trying to figure it out for a while so I wanted to make sure it's wasn't a bug so I don't spend more time trying to figure out something that's unsolvable. Can anyone confirm please?

[Trebbinz]

yes

[dgarcia42]

There's a 5 instruction version that will complete in 25 steps. One optimization hint, read from the inbox before jumping. It saves you at least a round. Why? Because if you jump before inbox, on your last pass through it will be "jump | inbox" for 2 instructions, but if you inbox before you jump then on your last pass through it will be "inbox" for 1 instruction, et. voila! you've just saved a step :)

[Dark Dev]

I completed it in 24 steps, but I completely sacrificed the amount of instructions I needed doing it. Remember, loops are actually very inefficient, one method of speeding up programming has always been to unravel a loop and just hardcode the instruction sequence over and over again.

[Mroz]

Like dgarcia42 said sometimes it is very beneficial to start program in the middle of the code by using 1 jump which is executed only once and put the rest before inbox command so you ommit 1 necessary jump instruction between outbox and the next inbox

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Got it completed. Thanks for the tips ladies and/or gentlemen, I wouldn't have figured it out on my own, but thanks to this one challenge I have a better understanding on code optimization.