Ants

ants.pl

#!/usr/bin/env perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use feature qw(say);
use constant LENGTH => 10;

my ($n, $min, $max) = (shift @ARGV || 8, 0, 0);
my @positions = ();
push @positions, int(rand(LENGTH + 1)) for (1 .. $n);
for my $position (@positions) {
    $min = max($min, min($position, LENGTH - $position));
    $max = max($max, max($position, LENGTH - $position));
}
say '[', join(', ', @positions), ']';
printf("MIN:%d MAX:%d\n", $min, $max);

sub max { $_[0] > $_[1] ? $_[0] : $_[1] }
sub min { $_[0] < $_[1] ? $_[0] : $_[1] }

ants.py

#!/usr/bin/env python
LENGTH = 10
positions = (2, 6, 8)
t_min, t_max = 0, 0

for pos in positions:
    t_min = max(t_min, min(pos, LENGTH - pos))
    t_max = max(t_max, max(pos, LENGTH - pos))

print "MIN:" + str(t_min)
print "MAX:" + str(t_max)