The Nineteenth Byte

About a year ago you were asked to find the XOR primes. These are numbers whose only factors are 1 and themselves when performing XOR multiplication in base 2. Now were are going to spice things up a bit. Converting to Base -2 Base -2 is a lot like every other base. The left most place is ...

muddyfish

and that message isn't going to be the next 100 star chat message either

who's playing with stars?

Easterly Irk

I starred flawr's

DJMcMayhem

Learning a new library == trying to implement something simple for thirty minutes before realizing it's already implemented exactly what you're looking for.

wilks

Hi all

DJMcMayhem

Hello!

wilks

9:28 PM

I was wondering something about scoring answers

Is it cool to check with you guys?

very cool

@wilks yes

@Dennis ;-;

@whoever I was talking with last, the magic event starts play at 11:30 and ends play at 18:30

Pavel

Rabbits are cute don't eat them

wilks

9:29 PM

right, I asked a question here, put "shortest answer wins" at the end since that looked kinda standard

muddyfish

@wilks normally we add 'in bytes' but it should be fine with most people

Dennis

@Pavel Huh?

wilks

okay. Then I'm starting to think, what if about ppl using their own custom golfing language

Pavel

22 mins ago, by Dennis

Nah, rabbit is actually quite tasty.

wilks

just move the extra bytes into their language

muddyfish

9:32 PM

@wilks but does it matter? As a default, answers are allowed to specify their own codepage

Pavel

muddyfish

@wilks our rules currently allow any language as long as it was written before the challenge was posted

wilks

Allright, that makes sense

phew

DJMcMayhem

@wilks it's up to you. If you do accept an answer, definitely accept the shortest. Some people don't accept answers because it doesn't make sense to score golfing languages against normal ones

Dennis

@wilks We do that all the time. There are two important things to keep in mind: 1) Answers are only competing if the language and its implementation predate the challenge. 2) Comparing answers in different languages is meaningless anyway. You won't beat Perl with Python or Python with Java.

DJMcMayhem

9:33 PM

Dec 3 '16 at 17:14, by DJMcMayhem

@Dennis I don't know... I kinda recently hit a point where I feel like accepting doesn't make a whole lot of sense for code-golf challenges, and I haven't accepted one since

s/Python/Anything

Yes, I remember. ._.

Haha

So would it be okay not to accept an answer? It also seems unfair somehow

as in not accepting ANY answer

muddyfish

@wilks it's up to you whether to accept an answer

Poke

9:34 PM

relevant

Pavel

If the shortest solution is actually a really good solution, sure.

DJMcMayhem

Like I said, it depends on who you ask. A lot of people have stopped accepting,a lot of people still do

muddyfish

People tend to get annoyed though if you accept one that isn't the shortest

Pavel

If it's a one-byte builtin, that doesn't actually show any skill

DJMcMayhem

18

A: We're not a Q&A site. But what should be done about it?

Remove the Accept feature This feature is likely way too integral to how SE instances work for this to be possible without forking the software, but I don't think the concept of accepted answers is useful on PPCG. The most fundamental pillar of this community is that every single question needs...

wilks

9:35 PM

@Poke thanks!

muddyfish

note that if you're challenge can be answered with a 1 byte builtin, it's not a good challenge IMO

Anonymous

@muddyfish That's not necessarily true. Some good challenges can be solved by a really obscure, weird 1-byte builtin in certain languages

muddyfish

true.

wilks

Also what if you need to pass an extra argument in the command line to run the custom language, should that count as bytes?

muddyfish

But if lots of golflangs have it

@wilks yes

Pavel

9:37 PM

@wilks yes

muddyfish

there are a few exceptions

DJMcMayhem

@Mego you're just saying that because your language has a "reverse Fibonacci" built-in. :P

muddyfish

I think there's one for perl

Anonymous

@DJMcMayhem :P

Pavel

In Perl, -p is one byte

Because you include the - anyway to run with -E. I think that's the explanation.

Poke

9:38 PM

In Java, wait nevermind... :\

Anonymous

@muddyfish The language version specification (-N5.10 or whatever) is free

Pavel

I don't actually perl.

Anonymous

If you're going to accept an answer, you should accept the winning answer (which for code golf is the shortest answer in bytes, with first answer to reach that score as a tiebreaker). However, if you conveniently forget to accept an answer, nobody will notice or care.

wilks

say you're using python, you type "python file.py". Now if you're using 05AB1E, that would be "python 05AB1E.py file.py". How do you count it?

Anonymous

Basically, for command-line arguments, "standard" arguments (needed to run the program) are free. Anything extra/different counts.

ais523

9:40 PM

@wilks anything that's part of the shortest method of running a program is free

anything beyond that carries a byte penalty of one byte per added byte

although, hmm, that gives me an idea

Anonymous

@wilks python 05AB1E.py file.py is the standard invocation, so it's fine

Pavel

@wilks in your example, that's 0 bytes.

ais523

@Pavel the basic idea is that you need to give switches anyway, so a switch like -p that can be stacked with other switches only costs oen byte, for the p

wilks

Okay, thanks a lot! that's a weight off my shoulders

Anonymous

@ais523 I think we do byte penalty equal to the edit distance from the nearest standard invocation, but I'm not sure. I've never had to use obscure command-line args and figure out how to score them.

ais523

9:42 PM

@Mego oh, edit distance, that makes sense; I can think of at least one challenge in which the easiest Perl solution would involve deleting two characters from the standard invocation…

Pavel

I think it's basically just perl

mbomb007

@ATaco From your Threead specs: n: Get a numger that the string represents.

What's a numger?

Anonymous

Yeah Perl is the usual culprit for CLA headaches

Anonymous

@mbomb007 Nothing, what's a numger with you?

Pavel

I think PHP? I'm not sure.

mbomb007

9:43 PM

@Mego A matterbaby

Anonymous

PHP is the usual culprit for headaches in general - not just CLA headaches

ais523

@Mego right, a ton of things are shorter in Perl via command-line arguments than they are via actual code, to the extent that even anagolf's penalty for arguments (7 bytes + the full length of the arguments) is sometimes worth paying

Pavel

Is it a coincidence all languages commonly used for the web are shit?

CSS, JS, PHP, SQL

ais523

@Pavel Rails manages to be considerably worse than Ruby itself, so probably

Anonymous

@Pavel Well the web is held together by duck tape and hope, so it's not surprising

Gabriel Benamy

9:45 PM

is there a challenge to un-zalgo-ify text

ais523

the whole leftpad thing did not give an encouraging view of the web software ecosystem…

Pavel

We should really just go back to telnet

@GabrielBenamy AFAIK no.

Gabriel Benamy

would such a challenge be trivial?

Anonymous

Probably

Anonymous

Stripping out combining chars wouldn't be hard

Pavel

9:46 PM

There's three of them, right?

To that's 4 bytes in Jelly

Anonymous

@ais523 That was just NPM being terrible, though. There are plenty of examples in other ecosystems.

Pavel

Actually the chars themselves are more than one byte, so a bit longer.

Poke

@Pavel you're including sql here?what's wrong with sql

ais523

so you'd need to submit the Jelly program in UTF-8

@Pavel the combining characters aren't a) a single byte long, or b) in Jelly's character set

wilks

Bye!

Pavel

9:47 PM

SQL was fine when it came out.

Now it's old and bad

Poke

that doesn't really answer my question

Anonymous

SQL is a bit like a house of cards

Poke

you're just reiterating your main point

Anonymous

If you're very careful, it's fine

Anonymous

If you're not careful... DROP TABLE 'students';--

ais523

9:48 PM

I think SQL is still usable for its original purpose, but there's just far too many people trying to use it for something else (or trying to use something else for its job)

Pavel

It's weird. Maybe it just takes getting used to.

ais523

@Mego that is not a fault of SQL (which even provides DROP TABLE ? to take input), that's a fault of the languages calling into it

Poke

@Mego well to be fair this is not a fault of sql

ais523

many of which are string-evalling arbitrary code input by the user

Gabriel Benamy

@ais523 sql will run my website and i'll be damned if it doesn't like it

i won't build a php interface on top of sql, i'll have sql directly output html

Anonymous

9:49 PM

@ais523 True. SQL by itself is safe, but also not very useful. SQL with other stuff interfacing with it is useful, but dangerous.

Poke

prepared statements/stored procedures aren't difficult, though

Pavel

Would rather not tho

Poke

pretty much any library you use has something built in to manage it all for you

the only thing i can think of is when you start joining a lot of tables together. things start to get confusing with joins/group by/etc

Anonymous

@Poke True, but it's also very easy for someone who doesn't know what they're doing to expose huge vulnerabilities

Poke

@Mego sqli isn't as bad as command injection imo

and that can be exploited in many more langs

redstarcoder

9:52 PM

I find now-a-days literature points people towards prepared statements

I still don't like SQL though, I prefer noSQL like MongoDB

Poke

@redstarcoder perhaps so. the problem that seems to crop up is that people will tend to throw a ton of business logic into a query

and that's bad

especially because databases don't scale well

Pavel

I prefer to not maintain databases. Let other people do that.

Poke

which means your cpu is more limited

Pavel

Easier that way

redstarcoder

@Poke well, that depends on the database :p

Poke

9:53 PM

traditional sql was what i was thinking

but yeah

i don't generally consider nosql databases to be a subset of databases even though that's objectively incorrect

redstarcoder

Well basically anything can be a database! What limits one datastorage option from being a database or not? I think it being queryable typically qualifies it as a database.

Poke

you've beat me there mr. pedantic :P

Pavel

int[][]a=new int[10][3]

redstarcoder

Haha I was more wondering from your point of view, what exactly is a database?

Pavel

Boom, database

redstarcoder

9:56 PM

Yup :)

Poke

When I say database 99% of the time I'm talking about a SQL Database as they have been around since the dinosaurs and are tried and true.

redstarcoder

Ah that's fair

Poke

When you think about your data layer in an application you have the concept of DAO classes

which is Data Access Object

Pavel

To be fair, tjats what most people mean by database

Poke

that can point to a database, or a text file, etc

so if I'm trying to be general i'll just say data source

Pavel

9:58 PM

tl;dr don't develop for the web if you value your sanity.

Poke

server-side development is ok even for web applications

it's when you start having to deal with browser compliance and stuff

that's the part i hate

redstarcoder

It gets kind of rediculous

Pavel

I once made a website with a script that checked if the user was using chrome, and only even tried to display anything if that was true. I borked it pretty bad.

redstarcoder

Now I'm wondering what validators have to say about the online *><> interpreter. Nothing good I bet

Not so bad 28 Errors, 20 warning(s)

It looks like the "*><>" in the title just borked it

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

@flawr imgur.com/gallery/S82QF

New Sandboxed Posts

10:21 PM

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Find the Orthocentre of a Triangle Given the coordinates of the three vertices of a triangle as input, return the coordinates of the orthocentre. The coordinates may be given as tuples, arrays or just pairs of numbers. You can assume that the coordinates make up a legit triangle. Make your code ...

DJMcMayhem

@EᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏIʀᴋ that's awesome

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

10:34 PM

ye

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

11:01 PM

anymore feedback on this?

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Match coordinates with their values Given 3 input items, a list of coordinate pairs, a 2D string, and a single-character string, output whether the character at each coordinate of the 2D string is equal to the single character. Example: (0,0), "#_\n__", "#" -> True The string is #_ __ The ...

quartata

@redstarcoder Check it with HTML5 not HTML 4.01

redstarcoder

Oh wow the errors start to make sense

Thanks!

DJMcMayhem

11:22 PM

area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/93238/…

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

already committed

DJMcMayhem

An awesome site that's just about to go live. Want to get it on it? There's your chance! ^^

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

it'll be starting private beta soon!

@DJMcMayhem lel ninja edit

DJMcMayhem

Haha. I'm excited cause I've never been in on a private beta before

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

ah, okay

it'll start in a week or so

quartata

11:26 PM

3

Pastafarianism

Proposed Q&A site for pirates and followers of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

Currently in definition.

beautiful

DJMcMayhem

You have no idea how many times they've shut down that exact proposal

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

hahaha

quartata

Actually yes I do. I still like the sample questions though.

TrojanByAccident

@DJMcMayhem Why?

quartata

Flying Spaghetti Monster

The Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) is the deity of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster or Pastafarianism (a portmanteau of pasta and Rastafarian), a social movement that promotes a light-hearted view of religion and opposes the teaching of intelligent design and creationism in public schools. According to adherents, Pastafarianism is a "real, legitimate religion, as much as any other". Pastafarianism is legally recognized as a religion in the Netherlands and New Zealand – where Pastafarian representatives have been authorized to celebrate weddings and where the first legally recogniz...

Downgoat

11:28 PM

> Which type of beer will come out of the beer volcano in Heaven?

quartata

@Downgoat s/beer/tin can/g

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

lel

DJMcMayhem

@TrojanByAccident because it's a joke religion that apparently has lots of followers

Downgoat

ohmygodyes

TrojanByAccident

@quartata I know exactly what Pastafarianism is

quartata

11:29 PM

@EᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏIʀᴋ Please don't actually follow it.

Downgoat

Should we flag it as spam?

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

eh, just for fun

Downgoat

I mean it is spam

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

no

it's stupid

not spam

quartata

By giving it followers you're making it so that it doesn't die in the 3-day start period

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

11:29 PM

ah, oaky

TrojanByAccident

@DJMcMayhem It's not, though, because although it may seem ridiculous, people do follow it, just as avidly as Christians follow Christianity

Downgoat

@EᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏIʀᴋ It's not like commercial spam but yes, it is still BS post with not the least ounce of actual value

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

the SE definition of spam is advertising

though IMO we do need a flag as really stupid option

quartata

It's called "requires moderator intervention."

Downgoat

PPCG mods told me to flag such things on PPCG as spam so I'll do in on A51 too

quartata

11:31 PM

This proposal has been made and deleted at least twice over the past three years to my knowledge

@Downgoat Well then I hate to say it but they were wrong

I find that hard to believe though considering Dennis has said the opposite many times

Downgoat

it's kinda like in a group chat where someone spams "hihihihihihihi" and then selects it and pastes it like 10 times.

I mean it's not advertising

you'd still call it spam

since they are posting over and over the same BS

DJMcMayhem

@TrojanByAccident Yes, clearly the joke religion that someone made up ten years ago that "promotes a light-hearted view of religion" is every bit as legit as something that's been around for 2,000 years with over a billion followers

quartata

No that's rude or abusive.

although not especially

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

it's abusive IMO

abusive of the priviledge to send messages

@Downgoat I feel your pain

Downgoat

yeah but there's no flag for that

TrojanByAccident

11:33 PM

@DJMcMayhem Religions are defined by their followers. Pastafarianism clearly has followers.

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

@Downgoat for rude or abusive? there is

Downgoat

Oh, I'm in the context of group chats

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

ah lol

flawr

@EᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏIʀᴋ hahaha, I think sone just woke up because of my laughter XD

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

what platform specifically?

@flawr lol

do you live in a teacher/faculty building?

DJMcMayhem

11:35 PM

> "This is not a question of theology", the ruling reads in part. "The FSM Gospel is plainly a work of satire, meant to entertain while making a pointed political statement. To read it as religious doctrine would be little different from grounding a 'religious exercise' on any other work of fiction."

Downgoat

@EᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏIʀᴋ Google Hangouts

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

ah ok

TrojanByAccident

> Pastafarianism is an officially recognized religion in three countries—first in Poland, . . . then in the Netherlands this past January. And just this weekend, New Zealand. . .

> In Czechia and Lubbock, Texas, Pastafarians have been allowed to wear their traditional headdress—a colander—in state ID photos

flawr

@EᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏIʀᴋ nope:)

@Lynn Reminded me of your explanation: adit.io/posts/…

helped me heaps!

trichoplax

@TrojanByAccident I'm not aware of any evidence that any of the followers believe, rather than simply asserting their right to observe a religion, but if you want to have an extended discussion about it I'd recommend starting a separate room so it can be more easily followed.

TrojanByAccident

11:47 PM

@trichoplax I wasn't particularly looking to discuss the religion in detail, I just wanted to point out that it is indeed a religion, whether people think it's a joke or not.

El'endia Starman

@EᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏIʀᴋ That was great.

trichoplax

@TrojanByAccident Defining what counts as a religion is a highly divisive topic which I see no need to discuss in The Nineteenth Byte. I suggest either dropping the topic or taking it to a dedicated room.

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

@El'endiaStarman ye

TrojanByAccident

@trichoplax Indeed.

Downgoat

@TrojanByAccident Goatism is real religon, not a joke :P

TrojanByAccident

11:56 PM

@Downgoat Goatism?

Downgoat

The belief that goats are god, goats are life, goats are everything, you are a goat, I am a goat, goat.

TrojanByAccident