The Nineteenth Byte - 2014-10-14

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12:02 AM

@PeterTaylor: I know. I consider it the lesser of two evils as I prefer to present arguments in their entirety. Since it can take several minutes to type, I only post in increments if there isn't somebody else online. Otherwise a lengthy post inevitably gets broken up by others' comments, including comments that "prematurely" address the content in the incomplete post.

Martin Büttner

@COTO I think Peter is referring to you replying to three people about different things.

@MartinBüttner: I do that because replying to the comments one-at-a-time often starts a conversation and preempts posting the later comments. But since I agree that the "see more" box is annoying, I'll try to avoid it in future.

I'm much more of a message board kind of guy than a chatroom kind of guy.

Martin Büttner

The beauty of this chatroom is that you can respond to specific messages (hover over the message you want to reply to and click the little return-arrow on the right) - that allows you to respond to things without any confusion even if some other messages came in between. so you could still just post your three messages and ignore what others say in between, and then get back to the responses. :)

@MartinBüttner Testing a reply.

Does it always show up immediately after the target post in the timeline?

Martin Büttner

no, but if I click the arrow left of it, it'll scroll to and highlight the post you replied to

@COTO try it

12:11 AM

OK, that is a nice feature. Thanks for pointing it out.

Martin Büttner

no problem

well, I'm off for today... later!

Cheers.

1:05 AM

@PeterTaylor That's a good point. I'll have to look into it to see if it could make a good challenge. My original idea was something along the lines of "Output a string to match each of these 1000 checksums", fastest-code style.

7 hours later…

New Sandboxed Posts

8:34 AM

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Task This task is a popularity-contest. Your goal is, to bring this peace of C++ code #include <iostream> int main(int argc, wchar_t* argv[]) { int a = 5; int b = 6; int c = a + b; int d = b - a; std::cout << "Hello World" << std::endl; std::cout << "If you add " << a <<...

Martin Büttner

0

Q: Cops and Robbers: Regex Golf

The Cops' Challenge You are to write a short, obfuscated regex, satisfying the following spec: You may choose any flavour that is freely testable online. There's a good list of online testers over on StackOverflow. In particular, Regex101 should be good to get you started, as it supports PCRE,...

code-golf regular-expression obfuscation cops-and-robbers

Are we allowed backreferences?

Martin Büttner

@Sp3000 sure

"You may use any feature of that flavour, which does not directly invoke the host language (like Perl's code evaluation features)."

k :)

8:49 AM

@MartinBüttner Nice challenge!

Martin Büttner

@grc thanks :)

9:03 AM

0

Q: Where to put non coding challenges?

I have an idea for a question as shown here http://meta.codegolf.stackexchange.com/a/2322/19894 but it is not really something that has todo with coding, it is more redefine language tokens. Where should I post this kind of questions? This for example is really fun to do, you could e.g. translat...

feature-request support

Martin Büttner

10:02 AM

someone doesn't like regex :(

Seems fun though :(

Is there a character limit for regexes?

Martin Büttner

not really, no

but shorter is better

10:25 AM

is it alright to use ideone as a tester (for perl)?

Martin Büttner

sure, as long you clearly set up a little framework for testing, and of course don't use code evaluation features ;)

I was going to post a KOTH to the sandbox

But now that I've typed it out I think it's too complex for anyone to bother :/ (card game German Whist)

@MartinBüttner thanks - the other ones don't seem to handle runtime errors too well :s

@Sp3000 if you've written it up you might as well post it in the sandbox

Martin Büttner

@grc I've added that to the question

Hm... k will post then, thanks :)

10:45 AM

@MartinBüttner Or maybe they don't like cops-and-robbers.

Martin Büttner

@PeterTaylor that occurred to me as well, and I checked the previous 3, and only one of them didn't have downvotes ^^

New Sandboxed Posts

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

German Whist Note: I'm not sure what the best way to run this KOTH is (e.g. allowing for all sorts of different languages) so if someone feels like taking this idea and posting it, feel free to go ahead :). It's also possibly too complex to code for a KOTH, so ideas on how to change it into a co...

(FWIW I think the cops-and-robbers concept is an interesting one, but that in order to work well it needs to allow at least a week to attack an answer)

Martin Büttner

11:34 AM

@PeterTaylor I guess we'll have to experiment with the time frame a bit. I was afraid that more than a couple of days would make automated cracking too feasible. But maybe that concern was unjustified.

Darn, regex101 has a 2 sec timeout

Martin Büttner

oh, right

that's a problem

I'll look for a tester without timeout later, but let me know if you find one in the meantime

@MartinBüttner It might do, but 48 hours means that unless you get a lot of people interested an answer can potentially be slipped in at a quiet moment and barely seen.

Martin Büttner

hm, true... how bad would it be if I changed it now?

No-one's answered yet, so I don't think it would be bad.

Martin Büttner

11:49 AM

I just thought, with a week, people might forget to go back and make their answer safe by adding the key

For my purposes, I'm finding that RegExr's a lot faster at doing what I want it to do

I don't think any of them are liking 63MB inputs though :/

Martin Büttner

@PeterTaylor I'll make it 3 days now

12:23 PM

Just started off the regex challenge with something that shouldn't be too hard :)

New Sandboxed Posts

1:02 PM

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Organise the Students into Pairs code-golf algorithm graphs You're a primary schoolteacher. You decide to implement pair work in your classroom for certain activities. However, upon announcing this, the children immediately vehemently oppose the idea. "But Miss," one of them says, "what if I g...

Martin Büttner

1:58 PM

damn, I should have listened to Rainbolt and put a maximum length on the keys :D

just because of the technical difficulties of sharing the key

Ahaha well. :P

Martin Büttner

I think I'll do that now (and your submission remains valid, as it was posted before)

Sounds good - for sanity's sake :)

Martin Büttner

oh, you ninja edited my comment :D

;)

Darn, I like Regex101, but it's not working with my (?(id/name)yes-pattern|no-pattern) Python syntax :/

Martin Büttner

2:14 PM

hm, that's odd

My phone is going crazy with tornado warnings o:

>>> re.match("(?(1)a|b)", "b")
<_sre.SRE_Match object at 0x028843D8>

Works in Python :/

3:02 PM

Now I'm not sure how many people already have the key, but can't test because trying to paste hangs their browser

3:47 PM

0

Q: What counts as a duplicate on CodeGolf.SE?

Unlike on other Stack Exchange sites, the execution of an idea really makes a difference on this site. My question is, if an idea for a challenge has been used before, does that make any other challenge based on the same idea off-topic, or can an idea be re-used if it's implemented in a substanti...

4:28 PM

How many of you know that guy who is only interested in creating problems, and not at all interested in solving them?

SQL is already hard enough to wrap your mind around without that guy sitting behind you.

Okay. I'm putting on my happy face now. /rant off

@Geobits Challenge me to something that can take all day without requiring constant attention

Hatch me a shiny Eevee with 31 IVs in HP and both defenses. Careful nature.

Thanks in advance :D

And yes, I know that guy.

4:44 PM

I just found out that I can tab indent and unindent a block select. If it runs into anything that isn't whitespace, it won't move any further. It's like playing Tetris with my code!

That's cool and all, but I can't help wondering whether you're taking my request seriously.

takes off Happy Face and puts on Serious Face

user image

puts Happy Face on top of Serious Face to form... Harious Face!

How do you keep taking off your face? I only did that once, and it took several months of recuperation (and was extremely expensive).

Martin Büttner

5:22 PM

@Rainbolt Calvin's Hobbies?

5:43 PM

@MartinBüttner Surprisingly, that's a new development for him. 10 of his 12 answers were posted before he asked his first question :D

Martin Büttner

6:22 PM

@PeterTaylor Regarding cops and robbers in general, I think the concept has one problem that most ways I could think of to make new such challenges could all be tackled by large semiprimes and modular arithmetic.

Peter Taylor keeps leaving comments on one of my meta posts. Each one starts with a false assumption, followed by a paragraph of information based on that false assumption. It's difficult to address his concerns when each one is based on something false.

Martin Büttner

6:38 PM

@Rainbolt I'm not sure you got his point though. Some of those tips are specific and about obscure features that it's impossible to ask for them if you don't already know they exist.

I thought you guys might like vindinium.org

for the game itself, and for the framework idea. entries are http clients, the controller is an http server

I was just thinking about an http server framework yesterday... Was trying to figure out a challenge that would benefit more from that than a standard approach.

@MartinBüttner You and Peter are saying that it's impossible to ask a question when you don't know the answer exists. That's just false.

I understand that you can't possibly know the answer exists.

But it's entirely possible to ask the question.

And if you wanted to gather all of the answers to all of the questions, you don't need a huge list to do that. You could just search by tag, like python-golf.

If you wanted to know about things that you didn't even know to ask about, you could search by tag. If you wanted to ask about something new, you could do that too.

Martin Büttner

6:55 PM

@Rainbolt I assure you there are question I would never think of asking, but still I've found very useful answers in the tips lists.

And why wouldn't you be able to find that information after splitting it into multiple questions?

Martin Büttner

@Rainbolt The problem is if no one even knew to ask about it. Then there is no question and answer to be found in that tag.

Whoever generated the tip obviously knew there was a problem to be solved

Are you aware of the ask and answer feature?

Martin Büttner

@COTO Even without the new limit, I think you wanted {0,16} to be {0,15}, or otherwise your pattern is very easy to crack, because any string of 16 characters matches, and tons of longer strings don't.

@Rainbolt Oh, now I get it. So you propose that instead of answering tips questions, you ask and self-answer and new question?

That seems more reasonable.

I'm not saying that it's impossible to ask a question if you don't know whether an answer exists. I am saying a) that some questions just wouldn't occur to people to ask; and b) that there's no guarantee that people will ask them using the right words to get any search engine benefit.

Martin Büttner

7:06 PM

@PeterTaylor turning answers to a list into question+answer might work though

My original objection was that it means that rather than reading one page to get all the tips for my language, I would have to read a dozen (or in the case of Python, rather than reading two pages I would have to read 49). That objection still stands.

It is rather handy as a list, even as un-SE as lists generally are. When I'm about to post a longish golf answer, I sometimes scan through the list looking for things I may have missed.

That's harder to do with search-by-tag unless they all have very good titles.

@PeterTaylor As I asked in the comments: Don't you already have to load multiple pages to find all of the tips for golfing in Python?

For example, you will not find this tip: codegolf.stackexchange.com/q/26831/18487

Should the answer to my separate question be consolidated into the tips list, and my question deleted, just because you like having it all in one place?

Or perhaps my question should stand, and we could just have redundant information?

If we reached 300 tips for golfing in Python, would you still want them all in one list? Isn't that even more unwieldy than 300 tagged questions with titles?

Redundant information isn't necessarily bad. Consider the meta approach, with [faq-proposed] where the details are ironed out, and the final "best" answer is made into a faq. That's one possibility (though I haven't decided if it's a good or bad idea yet).

I'll bet the list has stopped growing because people don't even want to risk duplicating one of the 48 answers that already exist. I certainly don't want to read it.

7:17 PM

I'm not sure it's 'stopped growing' yet. There have been four new answers in the last month (and one edit to an older one).

Sure, all given by people who probably took the time to read the other 44 answers

Sure, but considering it was originally asked over 3 years ago, four in a month isn't bad.

What if the tips aren't optimal? Just look at the evolution of answers that I got on my separate Python answer.

I agree with that. See my suggestion a moment ago. I'm trying to brainstorm a good middle ground.

A good middle ground would just be to 1) Ask questions and 2) Provide answers. I don't get why everyone here is struggling so hard to buck the format.

7:22 PM

"A good middle ground" != "Do it the way I agree with while disregarding arguments others have made"

"The format" for over three years on PPCG seems to be listy tips questions.

@Rainbolt Ah, is that what you meant by the question that I said I didn't understand?

Even so, 4 pages is a lot more browsable than 53.

@Geobits The long-lists questions are community-wiki and answers can be improved.

Right. I'm trying to come up with a good solution for side-by-side QA format with easily-scannable lists. Adding the "best" answer from the QA side to the lists seems like it would work.

Because I don't want to discourage people from asking them as questions, but I would like a good one-stop list.

gah

I'm trying to run a python script that uses curses and it's dying with no output at the first invocation of curses.initscr()

I'm having trouble getting any useful info out of the internet or the process on what's going wrong

Martin Büttner

@PeterTaylor For me, that's actually an argument against the current format. I don't think they should be CW, because people should get credit for their golfing tricks. And also, improving existing answers to the lists is likely to replace a previous (now suboptimal) variant - but it might be beneficial to keep the suboptimal ones around (in separate answers to a question), because they might be better in some situations due to precedence etc.

Better to keep the suboptimal ones around in the same answer with comments explaining in what circumstances they're better, surely?

Martin Büttner

7:37 PM

sure, if you can think of them off the top of your head when writing the answer

I like Geobits' idea

go for separate questions and make the lists a "best of" which condense the information from such questions, with links back to those questions for more detail and discussion

@PeterTaylor 53 well-titled, categorized questions is less browsable than 53 answers all on one page? How so?

Martin Büttner

@Geobits it feels weird to use a plural genitive with your user name. what's the recommended usage? :P

@Rainbolt Under the assumption that you do want to read all of them (which has been Peter's assumption all along), clicking 53 times is well annoying, and the titles have little relevance.

@MartinBüttner Most of the time people avoid it by saying Geo's, but it's not really that weird. Many businesses have plural names (Starbucks), and it's not nearly as bad as McDonald's's.

Martin Büttner

lol

"Geo's" sounds like a good idea... especially since that's just enough to tag you I think: @Geo

:D

7:41 PM

@MartinBüttner But what about the people who don't want to read all of them? Doesn't it have the opposite effect? Isn't it more convenient to find information when it's separated, titled, and categorized?

In fact, isn't that how Stack Exchange works in the first place?

Depends on your objective, I suppose. If you're looking for a specific tip, then yes it's more effective as Q/A. If you want more of a 'pre-posting checklist', then it's not.

Martin Büttner

@Rainbolt Yes, that's true. And while so far I've never looked for a specific tip in any of the lists, I'm sure that use case exists. I'm just saying, you can't refute Peter's argument by talking about a completely different use case. They're both valid points.

(which is why I'm on Geo's side for this... middle ground and stuff...)

@Geobits Is Stack Overflow a "pre-programming career checklist"?

Are we Stack Overflow?

If we are going to define an objective, and both objectives have equal downsides, why not use the one that matches the format?

Martin Büttner

7:44 PM

@Rainbolt Why is it so hard for you to accept a compromise?

The scope of golfing tips is obviously much narrower than "any useful programming advice in a language" (which I assume is what your StackOverflow would be getting at)

From what I can tell by reading old posts, PPCG was created because it didn't fit on SO, so comparing the two use cases is odd. While I agree that straying too far from the SE format is probably bad, there's also something to be said against following the format just for the sake of following the format, when alternatives can make sense.

@MartinBüttner Wait a second. Geobits's idea is a compromise, and mine is not? Now I think my idea is just being treated unfairly because you don't like it very much.

Let me make sure I understand your idea correctly, please correct if wrong: "Please use Q/A format only, tips shouldn't be in a list"

More specifically, "Transform the existing tips into a Q&A format." New questions already go there.

Ok, so what is that a compromise with?

7:57 PM

Close the existing tips question as Too Broad.

This way, we keep our tips and we also keep to the "Ask a question. Get an answer." format.

Who suggested closing? (honestly, I don't recall that coming up in months)

Are you trying to say that the timing of my proposal is the sole reason that yours should be labelled a compromise?

And that, because I suggested my proposal before you did, I should be labelled "unwilling to compromise"?

No, I'm trying to figure out where you got that idea from, since I thought it was generally settled that they wouldn't be closed.

Did you see that meta question? It's months old.

Someone brought it up this week in the chat, so I finally wrote the response I meant to write a long time ago.

The question is one month old, and nobody in it suggested anything close to "close the lists as too broad". Which is why I was surprised when you brought it up just now.

Because nobody's talking about it.

8:01 PM

Because my solution to the old problem just happens to solve the newer one as well.

In your eyes, yes. I disagree :P

If the same tip solves the same problem in multiple versions of a language, then there is simply no need to have two tips.

How do you search by tag then? Will there be separate [python2] and [python3], or will the version be included in every title?

You are welcome to disagree. You could hold on to your close vote if someone asked "How do I do this in Python 2?" and someone else "How do I do this in Python 3?" That's the beauty of being able to vote.

I don't know. Are the two versions so different that you think they need separate tags?

That seems like asking the same question as "are they different enough to warrant two tips lists", which goes on a case by case basis IMO.

8:04 PM

Right, but you can't go on a case by case basis because each tip is in a huge list. You either have two huge lists or you don't. There is no case by case.

I meant case by case as in "Java shouldn't be split", "Python should be", etc. Not really tip-by-tip.

With tags, you can treat each case in a special way. You could tag with python2 python3. You could also just tag as Python, and leave it to the answerers to cover their bases. Whatever needs to happen can happen.

Same as tagging (does X lang need two tags?)

There's a difference though.

If you create two tags, you haven't necessarily created a ton of redundant information.

Is redundancy bad in all cases?

8:07 PM

If someone asked how to do something in Python 2, and it was the exact same as the Python 3 question that was previously asked, I would do two things: 1) generalize the old question and 2) close the new one

I didn't say it was bad. I was merely describing the difference between what you said I suggested and what I actually suggested.

In one case, you have redundant information. In the other case, you don't.

Got it. So if something is tagged as [python] it applies to both, and if it's [python3] it only applies to 3?

Yes, assuming the community knows how to tag properly and close as duplicate.

And if I want to search for python3 tips, I need to search tags [python] OR [python3].

Then we'd have closed duplicates that are still searchable on Google that point to the real question that hopefully has a better answer.

@Geobits More generally, if you wanted to search for all of the information contained in a tag, you would have to search for that tag.

Well, right, but if I don't know whether it's specific to 3, I should search both.

8:11 PM

Your going to say "But it'll be in two tags instead of one" and I'll respond "Because the community split the tags into two. Maybe they shouldn't have done that."

I never said they should be split. I said they can be split.

You are now arguing that they shouldn't be, which is fine.

If splitting the tags makes things difficult, then don't.

Problem solved.

I'm not saying you did, I'm just assuming that at least one language will be split. "python" just being a stand-in for discussion's sake.

If it was split, and it shouldn't have been, then it shouldn't have been.

Is that what you needed to hear?

No... I could care less whether they're split for the most part, as long as tips are easy to find.

Which is the number one advantage that the long-lists have: I can look at them all very easily, all at once.

Martin Büttner

@Rainbolt No what I don't get is why you're so keen to get rid of the lists in addition to having your cake (in the form of individual questions). I think I very much understand your position and the benefit of having separate questions for cases where you're looking for something specific. But why can't you accept our use case of wanting to browse one big list with all good tips? It really wouldn't do any harm to your concept to keep the lists around as a directory.

@Geobits Wait... you can look at them all even if they get split into two lists?

Martin Büttner

8:15 PM

Heck, even SO does it like that

Either way, looking at two lists is easier than browsing through separate questions in two separate tags. Scrolling is faster than opening a new tab for each, yes.

@MartinBüttner Did you even read my answer to your question?
"We would have to do something to the current tips questions
Dissect them? Historical lock them and treat them as not a duplicate of anything? I actually like the latter option."

Martin Büttner

Yeah I don't want to historical lock them or dissect them... I want to keep them maintained.

I'd be happy if they were just locked and all new questions were asked separately with rigorous tagging and community moderation.

Martin Büttner

okay, but then the lists would become more and more useless over time

8:20 PM

Anyway, gotta run for now. Have fun!

Martin Büttner

@Rainbolt also, I know that that's what you want (and I think this is the third time I'm saying it). why does that have to mean that we can't also have the lists?

As far as I can tell, for the past half hour your response to "why can't we have both?" is "I only want one", but I don't see a good argument for letting us keep the lists as well

So your only argument against my proposal is that you want both?

If you want both, why don't you just do it that way. Why do you have to reject my proposal?

Martin Büttner

o.O

I'm not rejecting your proposal.

It actually sounds like you want to incorporate my proposal, but you have to somehow convince me that lists are good before you can do that.

Martin Büttner

I'm saying, let's do individual questions, yes!

But don't lock/delete/close the lists.

8:24 PM

I said we have to do something. I didn't say what that something was. I specifically left it open.

Please read it again: meta.codegolf.stackexchange.com/a/2320/18487

Peter was the one who started with the "major downside" stuff.

Martin Büttner

@Rainbolt Okay. There are two use cases relating to looking for lists: 1. I'm looking for a specific tip - individual questions are good for that. 2. I want to read all tips to generally become better at golfing in my language - lists are good for that. Conclusion: keeping both makes everyone happy.

Wait a second.

Peter was definitely not advocating both lists and separate questions.

Martin Büttner

I never said he was.

That was Geo's idea.

Then my comments to him stand.

Martin Büttner

And I agreed with him.

8:26 PM

0

Q: Greying of answers

I've noticed that in several places answers have been greyed out. Here's an example: Here, it is quite clear that the lower answer is lighter than the upper answer. Does anyone know why this is?

Martin Büttner

Also, just to remind you, that upvote on your answer is mine.

You're a popularity queen when it comes to arguing.

Martin Büttner

Hm?

43 mins ago, by Martin Büttner

@Rainbolt Why is it so hard for you to accept a compromise?

1 min ago, by Martin Büttner

Also, just to remind you, that upvote on your answer is mine.

Martin Büttner

You said things like "Why do you have to reject my proposal?" and I never did. I just wanted to clarify that.

8:29 PM

My original discussion with Peter Taylor was taken out of context and used against me here in the chat. It sounds like your only goal was to get me on board with Geobits plan. I don't know what that has to do with anything Peter and I were talking about.

I could care less what happens to the tips lists. Is that the ultimate statement you needed to have me say?

Martin Büttner

The argument between Peter and you was that you wanted individual questions and he wanted lists.

Geobits proposed a compromise between the two that could make everyone happy.

Although you did leave that point open your answer reads mostly like you want to get rid of the lists and only have individual questions. And you seemed to be arguing for that for the past hour as well. That's why we jumped in, arguing for just doing both.

So when I was arguing with Peter, the assumption was "one or the other". Then it moved here, and the assumption was "both". I never shared that assumption.

If you want to switch contexts, you should get my opinion on it before you tell me I'm wrong.

You can't switch context, tell me I'm wrong, then tell me what context we're in.

You just wanted to argue and get me on board with something I don't care about.

Martin Büttner

I don't think we told you you were wrong. Geobits suggested doing both, and I think you started arguing you still want only one, but I'd have to reread to be sure how the discussion started.

I just wanted to move my discussion out of the comments on meta.

Again, you were having a completely separate discussion than I was.

I never rejected his compromise, and you accused me of doing that.

Martin Büttner

Well, Geobits suggested an alternative when he was talking about a middle-ground solution and your response was along the lines "a good middle ground would be [my proposal]"... that seems like rejecting a compromise to me

but if you never meant it like that we can stop arguing about how we argue

8:34 PM

Because you implied that my proposal wasn't a compromise

Martin Büttner

see, we didn't have the context for that compromise

Look - I was having a discussion with Peter about which way is better.

You are the one who didn't follow. Stop trying to make it look like I was the one who was confused.

Martin Büttner

and compromises between those two sides had no place in the discussion?

then sorry

I was merely trying to point out that his "major downside" had a twin in the current format.

Martin Büttner

except there was no indication that you even acknowledge his use case ;)

but it's cool, we can really stop now

8:37 PM

His use case wasn't practical. He said something about a code-golf question belonging on SO

Where it would immediately be closed.

Martin Büttner

his use case was reading all tips in one go

Which I explained to him: he can still do.

Martin Büttner

now we just need a separate, dedicated meta question where I can propose an answer to have individual questions and one directory-like list per language

@Rainbolt not as conveniently though

just like right now you can't conveniently search for a specific tip

"Not as conveniently" and "Can't do it at all" are two different things.

Martin Büttner

he never said he can't do it at all. "Major downside: if I want to read all the tips for a language, I have to load a dozen or more pages."

8:39 PM

But under the current way of doing things, he already has to load multiple pages anyway.

So why not be consistent and load them all the same?

Martin Büttner

another reason to go for a compromise and create a single directory linking to the answers

Who will maintain that directory?

Martin Büttner

also, loading 4 is still better than loading 50

@Rainbolt the same people who currently answer the lists?

"the community"?

So if I answer a question, the community will extract that into a list?

This extra effort probably offsets the amount of extra effort it would take to load 50 questions instead of 50 answers in a huge list.

Martin Büttner

well you don't have to maintain the list if you don't want to

8:43 PM

If you are an active member of the community, would your focus be on an old tips list, or would it be on new tips?

Martin Büttner

I think I am an active member of the community, and I revisit the tips lists all the time.

But you are probably looking for something, no?

Martin Büttner

specific?

no

Here's my prediction: if Geobits's idea gets carried out, the old tips lists will fade away.

I'll say I told you so in a few years if we're both still active.

Martin Büttner

so? if that happens, then I guess the lists weren't as useful as we thought and no harm done

that's the benefit of keeping both around: we'll just see which is more useful

(or if having both is best)

8:46 PM

Hard to be useful when you have 100% overlap with much more expanded Questions and Answers (maybe multiple competing answers, each complete with comments explaining the various problems and plusses of each approach)

Martin Büttner

yeah, I get it by now, that you don't plan to use the lists if you have individual questions

I do

Every time I try to compare the usefulness of a giant list here to a "how to program in Java" list on SO, I just get "We aren't SO." I don't get any kind of meaningful response.

We are still Stack Exchange

Martin Büttner

no?

yes?

Martin Büttner

golfing tips for Java is a lot more narrowly scoped than how to program in Java

you can write books about how to program in Java

the list of Java golfing tips can be read in 10 minutes

the scope is more like this list: stackoverflow.com/questions/22937618/…

or this list: stackoverflow.com/questions/3737139/…

(while you're arguing with "That's how SO does it...")

8:49 PM

Sure, tips lists are relatively narrow, but they aren't narrow.

They're actually quite broad

They are actually so broad that every new question about golfing could be closed as a duplicate of one of those list questions.

In fact, one person tried to close vote my Python question. It obviously didn't pass because of community pressure.

Martin Büttner

@Rainbolt Okay, let's ignore what the lists are right now. Imagine we had individual questions and the lists were only a directory/summary to/of those questions. Then anything that duplicated content from the list would in fact be a duplicate, because there is already another question/answer thread covering that. The directory would actually help finding duplicates. And if it isn't on the directory, you can ask the question, because it's obviously not a duplicate.

That's exactly why they have those directories on SO, and why they work well and are so popular. And I wonder why you keep ignoring the existence of my comments pointing to those.

I've never had any problem identifying duplicate questions without a directory.

I don't see why I would start having problems if they were all properly tagged and titled.

If they were poorly tagged and titled, I can see why it might become a problem.

Martin Büttner

Or if they become too many?

I don't think so

Have we had a problem identifying duplicate challenges?

Martin Büttner

no, we've got Peter for that

but my point was that your concern, that individual questions would be duplicates of the lists if we keep them, was unfounded

9:02 PM

You pointed to two incredibly exceptional SO questions. For one, that PHP list isn't likely to change unless PHP itself changes.

It could basically be thought of as following the meta approach to FAQs

They answer a specific list of questions

Martin Büttner

And even those are much longer than our tips directories ever are likely to be

but still, I can take those lists, and browse them, and learn interesting things about PHP or Regex much more efficiently than by browsing the hundreds of thousands of questions tagged "regex" or "php"

I don't even care anymore. I didn't get to make the point I originally set out to make. You'll keep switching it back to an argument between "your way or compromise way" when that wasn't what I was after at all, because it conveniently turns me into the bad guy.

Martin Büttner

I thought it was you who kept arguing that there's no point in keeping the lists/directories around, because they are useless once we have individual questions

also you really seem to be missing the point the entire time that I'm completely agreeing with your reasons for having individual questions but you just can't acknowledge that some people might still find the list (in addition) more useful. whenever I state that both use cases have their merit you reply with something like "No, the lists are useless when we have individual questions."

I'd just like to understand why that's so important to you, but I'll stop trying now.

9:19 PM

Why what is so important to me. I said I don't care what happens to the current lists.

If all that was said was "the current lists are useful, so we should keep them too" then I would not have retorted.

You know that you said more than that.

And why do you need my acknowledgement that the current lists are useful?

Martin Büttner

no I don't need acknowledgement of that. it would just be nice if you acknowledged that some people do like to use them like that. just because you don't think they are useful, doesn't mean they aren't for everyone else. I don't see myself searching for specific tips, but I can still acknowledge your use case.

I acknowledge your use case as well, but I do not acknowledge it as a major downside to my proposal, because I didn't propose deleting them.

Wow, I wish I could have said that clearer thirty minutes ago.

Martin Büttner

Yeah that would have helped ;)

So we're cool? Individual questions + whatever with the lists?

Yes

Martin Büttner

sweet :D

9:27 PM

I'm on board as long as I'm not the one campaigning for or participating in the "Eternal Duplication Effort", which I shall henceforth call it.

That'd be a sweet title for your call to action on meta.

@MartinBüttner: The 90-byte regex submission should basically match everything except any string of a very specific length.

Martin Büttner

it didn't match the first 17-character string I tried

Hmm.

Darn it. Something went wrong when I copied it.

You know what would be cool? A robot that takes the question title and its top voted answer, and reposts it into every tips question that shares a language with one of the tags on the original question.

If someone actually did that, I would not only be on board, but supportive of the cause.

Martin Büttner

well a human could actually shorten it and make a useful summary of the all good answers

9:33 PM

@MartinBüttner OK, fixed now.

9:44 PM

Google shortens definitions of things. You can search for george r r martin and get a whole sidebar full of compressed information. That's what we need.

If we can do it how Google does it, I'll even get @Geobits the Eevee that he wanted.

Martin Büttner

lol

10:04 PM

Man! Martin's challenges is eating my life away

Martin Büttner

what, the collision detection? ^^

I got over it, then you post the regex one

Can't even concentrate on non-PPCG stuff now

Martin Büttner

oh that was plural :D

well I'm glad you like the challenges ^^

Trying to crack COTO's one is like doing a Sudoku, but better :P

Martin Büttner

lol yeah

at least he was so kind to put the alternations in a sensible order ^^

10:11 PM

Just saw a meta-duplicate on meta lol

10:38 PM

Well that was cracked pretty quickly

Martin Büttner

@TwiNight you've got beaten to it

I mean I laughed when I saw the [duplicate] tag at the end of the title

Martin Büttner

oh yeah, I was referring to the regex challenge

and yes, we get a duplicate question about duplicates every other week or so :D

Do I have to include a byte count in my regex submission?

I am tempted to do some unicode shenanigans

Martin Büttner

Yes you have to include a byte count, it's the primary winning criterion.

10:49 PM

Maybe I can sneak some of those in then

Wow those crackers......

Martin Büttner

@TwiNight I was actually expecting Unicode shenanigans.

In fact, I have an idea for such a submission myself which wouldn't be too hard to crack but would at least have people write a few ECMAScript test scripts to figure out what's going on ^^

Zero-width spaces, everywhere

Martin Büttner

lol no, I probably wouldn't even use Unicode in the pattern

11:11 PM

Does anyone ever check the "featured" tab at PPCG? I put a bounty on my question and have only received about 130 views in three days.

Martin Büttner

I do, every now and then

130 views is actually fairly decent for an old question

Yeah, I must have underestimated the importance of question "freshness".

Still hoping I'll get at least one new answer out of this.

@Rainbolt I could probably put together a crude version of that in less time than I've sunk into this Eevee hunt. Every time I get an egg I have to fight against the Gambler's Fallacy voice in my head.

Martin Büttner

11:28 PM

@TwiNight there's my own submission. looking forward to yours ;)

@Geobits This is why Auction Houses (trade markets) in MMORPGs kill the game. Everyone auctions their way to the best gear. You wouldn't put forth nearly this much effort if you could just farm a perfect Eevee from the Auction House

Damn right I wouldn't. Then again, I got out of MMORPGs about five years ago (cold turkey ;) ), so I can't speak for the state of the genre now (that was before auction houses were very common for major games).

@MartinBüttner Which tool did you test your regex on?

Martin Büttner

whoops

works on both regex101 and regexr

forgot to add that

Then again, for perfect pokemon, a lot of seriously competitive players just hack them in, since they're indistinguishable from legit ones if done right.

11:37 PM

k :)

Martin Büttner

@Geobits How competitive can you be if you cheat yourself the perfect Pokemon?

Competitive as in winning tournaments :P

Martin Büttner

Oh right...

In the major tournaments, all pokemon are perfect, and nobody cares how you got them, since it's more about movepools, prediction, etc.

11:57 PM

A competitive MTG Legacy deck can cost anywhere from $900 to over $5000. I'd be a little sad if someone hacked their's in after I spent that much money and effort collecting.

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