The Nineteenth Byte

Martin Büttner

6:47 AM

Awwww, thanks so much for the downvotes guys :P

Martin Büttner

7:51 AM

Anyway, we can graduate now. :)

Peter Taylor

Noooooo! I've just realised that Quincunx's polynomial factoring question doesn't specify that the polynomials are monic.

ProgramFOX

@MartinBüttner Congratulations on getting 20k!

3

Martin Büttner

thanks :)

@PeterTaylor The implication being? Wasted work based on a false assumption?

Peter Taylor

The implication being that the factors can be non-monic, so the division has to be able to do reciprocals over the base field. Relatively straightforward in finite fields of prime order, but over Z that means I need to implement rationals. It's a whole new layer of complexity.

Actually, over fields of prime order I can forget about it, because I'll just get a constant multiplier at the end.

Sp3000

I got prime fields, Z's a pain though. Had a heuristic but apparently it's complete false.

If I use brute force, is there any way of knowing when to stop?

(If there is, then 2 hours is a very generous time limit)

Peter Taylor

8:14 AM

@Sp3000 Yes. I found an excellent review paper on the subject: Bounds on factors in Z[x]

Sp3000

Wow they're.... pretty big bounds

Peter Taylor

Yes, so in GolfScript I may have a tradeoff between speed and length to meet the 2 hour requirement. In Python you should be fine with an ever looser form of Mignotte's bound

Sp3000

It wouldn't be hard to implement, but I wouldn't be very satisfied with my program :(

I'm already thinking of ditching the code golf aspect just to get a "good" program in

Since it's a hard question

New Sandboxed Posts

8:29 AM

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A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Evolution of Tetration domino-coding N.B. This is another version of Calvin's Hobbies new challenge idea. I won't go ahead and post it until I get a full thumbs up. If not, I'll convert this to code-golf. Tetration Tetration, represented by na, is used to represent large numbers. Basically, ...

Beta Decay

@MartinBüttner What're you thinking of as a restriction?

Martin Büttner

Nothing in particular. I just think that Calvin's Hobbies chose Levenshtein distance + simple task to test the waters, and not to make that the thing of the challenge. If we keep doing that, that's exactly what Doorknob warned of in the chat yesterday: it's gonna derail into the next code-trolling very quickly.

Beta Decay

Ahh okay.. I'll have a think about it then

Sp3000

I was thinking of something like "Print the previous program" at one point (with char limit restrictions), but I think that'd turn into a horrible kolmogorov :/ But something different in that sense?

Beta Decay

That would just be people getting the previous answer's code from online...

Sp3000

8:39 AM

Ahaha true - would be patchable, but that was just an example :P

Beta Decay

Maybe have a rule that your answer must contain 50% of the previous answer's characters with comments banned.

Martin Büttner

never mind...

Beta Decay

Nah, that regex might go down well

Martin Büttner

@BetaDecay what for? fetching results from the internet is a standard loophole?

@BetaDecay no it's too trivial... unless you do something like "a regex that matches all previous submissions, but nothing else"

Beta Decay

Oh yeah. That idea might work then.

Martin Büttner

8:47 AM

score would be most submissions, ties broken by sum of regex sizes (less is better)

gotta head off

Beta Decay

See you

Martin Büttner

I just realised on the way to the train that the above idea is still broken. What could work is "match the previous submission but none of the ones before it".

Beta Decay

Yeah. Matching all of them would be quite a feat...

Martin Büttner

9:12 AM

No, it would require matching all of them literally with | in between

Beta Decay

Ohh. That'd be rubbish

What do you do for the first answer though?

Martin Büttner

10:24 AM

@BetaDecay [] in ECMAScript flavour (matches nothing at all)

New Sandboxed Posts

10:39 AM

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A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Regex Domino Golf domino-coding code-golf regular-expression I just wanted to record this idea here before I forget it. However, I will hold off posting it until I'm convinced that domino coding is actually a good idea for PPCG (which I'm currently not). Feedback under the premise that domino c...

Beta Decay

@MartinBüttner Ahh

Sp3000

Do you think it's possible for someone to ruin the fun with a stupidly large regex that, say, contains the superstring of every possible n-gram or something in order to always get matched?

Martin Büttner

no, just use anchors

Sp3000

Ah true :P

Martin Büttner

also, not every possible n-gram is valid regex syntax

I'm off again

see you

New Sandboxed Posts

11:13 AM

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A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

So I had written this up as another domino-coding contest but the more I wrote the more I felt it was too complex rule-wise and might not work anyway. I might scrap it but I might as well see what others think. Help Grow the Communal Code Blob [code-challenge] [printable-ascii] Intro Defi...

New Sandboxed Posts

1:07 PM

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A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Traffic lights Easy challenge Write a program that that graphically shows traffic lights on a crossroads. It should output animation. There should be red, red+yellow, green, blinking green, yellow. Bonus - pedestrian traffic light. Complex challenge Write a program that manages traffic lights...

Beta Decay

1:19 PM

Woah, I've never seen programs so short...

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Q: Print the ASCII table

The task is to display n characters of the ASCII table. You may write a function (or a program that takes the argument as a parameter, STDIN is allowed as well) that takes a parameter n, which will be the index of the last character to print. The task is quite simple, so as an example here's a ...

code-golf

Geobits

1:48 PM

@Rainbolt Can I ask a serious question? Why are pushing so hard to defend that question? It was a pure code dump with a title that didn't match the actual code. You argued that it was perfectly clear before you realized/read what the code did, and refuse to change your position in light of that. What am I missing here? I know you're argumentative (hell, so am I), but I can't help but feel it's just not worth it in this case.

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